The perfect, unpretentious, well-constructed party bag was given to guests leaving a recent Hatchards party. It contained a wedge of farmhouse cheddar and box of cheese biscuits from Paxton & Whitfield, a bottle of good white wine and an elegant hardback copy of Lucky Jim.
The next evening, I tucked into all of these simultaneously, feeling spoilt, and meditating on how much nicer they were than some of the tat my children used to bring home from birthday parties in white polythene bags: a slice of synthetic birthday cake oozing its jam on to tadpole-sized balloons (which wouldn’t inflate, however hard you blew) and a polystyrene aeroplane whose wing broke off on assembly.
To come home from a children’s birthday party without a party bag these days is almost unthinkable. For adults, on the other hand (unless you’re a highly enviable fashion or beauty editor who gets bombarded with Chanel handbags, Dior scent and Smythson wallets), a good party bag comes as a delightful and unexpected surprise. It’s a treat to be given anything at all for free in the drainingly expensive decades of grown-updom. You travel home feeling lucky.
What you want in a party bag are practical, pleasure-giving nuggets that will raise the tone of your daily life. What you do not want are items that will clutter up your life and make you look like a freeloader. These include: a pamphlet telling you more than you want to know about the product being peddled or launched at the party; a folding umbrella with the firm’s name or logo on it; a branded biro; a branded telephone notepad; and a bottle of lime-infused water from a newly launched range.
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