Pippa Middleton should lighten up – great parties can't be planned

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/28/alex-clark-party-planning-pippa-middleton

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I am writing this in a state of what we must euphemistically call delicacy: I say "must" because, in our post-Leveson age, it is probably actionable to be drunk in charge of a newspaper column. But the facts are the facts. Earlier this morning, I opened one eye, carefully, just to check the world was still there. "How are you feeling?" I said to the person closest to me, although not necessarily in English; it was probably a bit more like: "Hyu... fling?" There was a long pause for consideration, then came the reply: "Like something washed up on a beach."

Things didn't get better with both eyes open. I note that I neglected to remove my makeup last night, so my pillow now resembles the Turin Shroud; also that my clothes were arranged on the floor in a manner that made it seem as though I had suddenly disappeared from inside them, perhaps as a result of spontaneous combustion. I half-wish I had gone up in smoke. I would of course have preferred to take a shower, but the prospect of the water hitting me seemed unbearably violent.

I am clinging to two things: first, that typing with sunglasses on, to reduce the painful glare of the computer screen, is giving me a sort of Holly Golightly air; second, that a country mile into last night's proceedings, someone offered me a rogue brandy and I declined. Imagine if I'd said yes!

Do bear with me. Although I realise that my skull-splitting nausea and booze-induced paranoia are not your problem, there is a point to all this. And it is this: that these sensations, while deeply unpleasant, are the result of an absolutely excellent time. And that the most excellent part of this excellent time was itself the result of – supply your own pun, I'm too weak – going off-piste.

Oh, sure, the evening began as a very respectable affair. It was a friend's 50th birthday party and a few of us were having dinner in a lovely restaurant; his wife had even arranged for the menu to feature some of his favourite dishes. Delicious food and wine and chatter flowed. And then, the issue of Going On reared its head; it was deemed to be a Good Idea. Here are some of the highlights: a friend who's recently lost a lot of weight's trousers falling down; seeing a man off the telly in a nightclub and remarking loudly that he was shorter than we thought; queuing up in a strip-lit minicab office at three in the morning.

I'm not sure I could have found the recipe for any of this in Pippa Middleton's <em>Celebrate: A Year of British Festivities for Families and Friends</em>, published to much fanfare (and, as the papers pointed out, requiring its author to change into four different outfits to launch it).

Organising an Easter egg hunt: check. Conjuring up an appropriately spooky Halloween party: check. Pimping a plate of scrambled eggs with some "inexpensive" caviar: erm, check. But keeping a group of middle-aged thrill-seekers not used to being out so late on the straight and narrow: unfortunately, un-check.

Isn't this the way it should be, though? Should celebrations ever, really, be "organised"? Obviously, if your family runs a party-planning business, as Middleton's does, you will answer in the affirmative; ditto if you are an exceptionally efficient person who likes nothing better than a clipboard full of spreadsheets revealing when the canapes go into the oven and who's on cloakroom duty. For the rest of us, throwing a party is more a matter of stowing the breakables on top of the wardrobe, buying four giant tubs of hummus and hoping that our friends still actually like us enough to miss <em>Breaking Bad</em>.

This narrative does not suit the professionalisation of enjoyment, however, which dictates that our conviviality be calendarised so that we can go from Bonfire night to Thanksgiving to Christmas and new year to Burns supper to Valentine's Day – and on and on – with our lives measured out in so many occasion-appropriate punchbowls and playlists. I say mix it up a bit: toss a pancake on the Fourth of July!

Or, better still, just go out and get someone else to do it. Here's my party advice: find some people you like, eat a bit, drink a bit, dance a bit, laugh a lot. Do as I say, and not as I do, and do not over-indulge in any of the above. And with that, I'm going to go back to bed.