Christmas parties: a survival guide

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/dec/12/christmas-parties-survival-guide

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Parties – how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways. There’s the dressing up for them. There’s the getting to them. There’s the being at them. The getting back from them. The meeting of strangers. Or people you know. There’s the not being at home. There are an awful lot of things.

When I receive an invitation to a party, I feel like the Irishman being asked for directions in the old joke. “Well,” I think to myself, looking at my unshaved legs, wardrobe full of unsuitable clothes, drawer full of tangled, laddered tights, lack of car, lack of cash on hand for cabs and all the rest of it, “I wouldn’t start from here.”

Parties have been the bane of my life since childhood. It was never difficult to distinguish between little Lucy Mangan and a ray of sunshine at any schoolmate’s birthday. Expressionless of face, unmoving of limb and mutinous of heart, I would stand in the corner counting off the minutes until it was time to go home. Occasionally I would pluck up the courage to ask an adult if I could go somewhere else to read. The answer was always no.

My teenage years were, as they always are, even more mortifying. This was when I discovered that not only could I not play nicely with others, I also couldn’t dance or interest anyone in me sexually. That’s a long night. My parents insisted I keep going out, which culminated, one night when I was about 15, in my mother screaming at me in the hall: “You’re going to that disco if I have to drag you there myself!” She did. I was back by half nine.

As you get older, of course, your autonomy increases and matters improve. But they’re still not great. Part of my problem, I concede, is sloth – staying in is simply easier than going out – and this is something I should work to overcome. Lazy arses should be dragged off the sofa and towards the fun zone just as they are dragged to the washing machine to do a load of laundry or to the fridge to start making dinner. If we didn’t fight against such weaknesses, nothing would get done at all.

Then there’s rage. Part of me believes parties are for people who need a pretext to pretend to enjoy themselves. I suspect Big Canape is behind it. The forced nature of it all revolts me. “Why,” I want to snarl at them all, “are you being like this? Why just for now? And why, above all, in sequins?” And of course beneath that, as there is beneath most anger, is sheer bafflement. I am closer to understanding some kinds of murderer than I am the genuinely enthusiastic partygoer. Is it them, I wonder? Or is it me?

What are conspicuous by their absence from this list of ingredients that make up the sunken cake of my temperament are any sense of either shyness or social anxiety. As a child and teenager, I think they probably played an aggravating part – but not now. A roomful of people is a roomful of people. I may feel or even be their physical, intellectual and/or social inferior, but I don’t care. From the moment I got the invitation I didn’t want to go. Who is actually there on the night is immaterial. They might be lovely, they might be a roomful of turds in suits and cocktail frocks. I might have a good time in the end, I might not. I still want to go home. I still, au fond, want never to have come. It wrecks my head, it upsets my equilibrium and leaves me mentally and bodily fatigued for a week.

This, according to Sophia Dembling, author of The Introvert’s Way, is at the heart of it. I’m not a shy flower or a creeping misanthrope or a lazy pig – or at least not all of me is, and not all the time – but an introvert. “The working definition of an introvert is someone who loses energy by interacting socially,” she tells me. “An extrovert gains energy from it.” I contemplate this in silence for a moment. “I don’t believe you,” I say. “It’s true,” she says. “I keep a panel of extroverts for research purposes and they say that they get depressed if they don’t get to go to parties and meet lots of people. They actually get unhappy.”

So it’s me and them. “Introverts just don’t have the motivation to go to parties,” says Dembling. “It’s just not our idea of a good time. And we’re no good at small talk. The world is not our friend. We like to meet people we already know, so we can skip past all that and engage properly.”

This, I should point out, was not the conversation of two introverts humblebragging. The subtext was not “Oh, we’re so clever and deep, we don’t do chitchat!” but one of regret, that there is an avenue of experience and delight closed off to us. Because as psychotherapist (and extrovert’s extrovert) Philippa Perry puts it: “Small talk is the gateway to bigger talk. It’s not about the content, it’s a way of saying, ‘I’m friendly. Are you friendly?’ You could try asking this instead of exchanging pleasantries about the weather. I’m up for it if you are.”

So what can the introvert do to survive the party season? Dembling advises finding yourself a job to do, like dispensing drinks, so the focus is on that rather than the socialising itself. Or find a corner that – however much your instincts urge you otherwise – is not too out of the way, and engage with the people who pass by. Or you could – and stay with me here – start holding parties yourself, on your terms. I know one woman who has a “leftovers party” sometime between Boxing Day and the new year. Both introverts and extroverts benefit from freedom from relatives with whom they have been cooped up over Christmas, and from the pressure to show off with gourmet courses (the leftovers are of the edible kind – not lovelorn folk wreathed in misery). And everyone can revel in the party as either a post-yuletide, pre-New Year’s Eve bonus celebration or as a brilliantly low-key substitute for both.

But above all, Dembling says, you should learn to honour your own degree of introversion (or indeed shyness, anxiety, fear or misanthropy). Husband your limited social resources. If you know there’s a do coming up at the weekend, make sure you stay in the week before and that there’s plenty of recovery time afterwards.

“You have a duty to go to these things, because other people want to see you,” says Perry, author of How to Stay Sane. I should note that she is a preposterously generous-hearted woman and that we have never been to a party together. “Make the audacious presumption,” Perry suggests, as if she has read my mind, “that everyone is pleased to see you and would like to get to know you. You’ll be more likely to hold your head up and smile, and then it will in all likelihood become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

And try to remember that all those people trying to drag you on to the dance floor are not evil seekers after your pain. They’re just extroverts. They are, really, having a good time and they want you to have one, too. It’s not their fault they’ll never understand that you’re an unyielding case of can’t-not-won’t.

My own advice, for what it’s worth, gathered over nearly 40 years of tear-stained party-going, is that if you drink, then drink. If you smoke, smoke. If you take pills, take pills. Retreat to the loo for 10 minutes out of every 60. Don’t forget your book. Don’t marry an extrovert. If single, do pull: sex is much easier than socialising.

Going out, and then staying out, gets easier with practice. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. Then, as WC Fields – that hero of every introvert and misanthrope – put it, quit. No use being a damn fool about it. Merry (within certain well-defined limits) Christmas and a happy (in your own way) new year to you all.

How the great and good make it through the night

Jarvis Cocker, singer

Make sure you have enough money for the taxi home: the only two times I’ve been badly beaten up happened while I was attempting to stumble home from a Christmas do. The second time, they nicked my specs. Write your address on your hand before you go out, so you can show it to the driver if you become incoherent. Or I suppose you could just not drink quite as much.

Olivia Colman, actor

Don’t go.

James Corden, actor

I’m no good at parties; I’d rather be at home wearing tracky bottoms. My tip would be to create a life for yourself. So you could tell people you were a roller-coaster designer who’d invented the Oblivion ride at Alton Towers. That way you keep yourself amused, possibly keep others amused, and you keep yourself on your toes.

Bill Bailey, comedian

Take a small yet fiendishly hard magical puzzle, like a box that won’t open or somesuch, and introduce it to some partygoers. This will attract a large group. While they take ages trying to figure it out, you can stand back, check your emails, eat some crisps and look like you’re joining in.

Piers Morgan, journalist

If I find myself trapped with a crashing bore at a party, I revert to the same master plan – I start talking excitedly and passionately about cricket. Unless they’re Tory MPs, they usually move on very quickly.

Emily Maitlis, Newsnight presenter

Always come to a conversation armed with two drinks. Then if it’s dire you can pretend you were on the way to find someone else. And if it’s interesting, you can stay and down both glasses without moving.

Alan Johnson, politician

Stay near the door. Make sure your face has been seen. Don’t drink, stay on the orange juice. If you’re stuck with a boring person, the mobile phone is a wonderful thing. You can invent an urgent call or just stare at it, as if you’re reading something urgent. As a politician, people always expect you have urgent business to attend to, which is very useful.

Charlotte Church, singer

I love parties. You get to meet lots of awesome new people who (if you were sober) you wouldn’t normally engage with. Get merry enough to be relaxed, and then your synapses really start flying. I’m never worried about being trapped with boring people. I know it sounds a bit romcom, but I really don’t think anybody’s boring.

Stephen Frears, film director

I’m a lot nicer than I used to be. In the old days I used to sit in a corner looking miserable, wondering why people weren’t talking to me. Extraordinarily idiotic. Now I’m more sociable. People are interesting. And a spliff can help.

Russell Norman, restaurateur

Christmas is about quality, not quantity, and going to every party you’ve been invited to is just asking for trouble. Pace is paramount: it is a marathon, not a sprint, so skip a drink every now and then. And for goodness’ sake, remember your manners: always thank the host warmly as you leave.

Sharon Horgan, comedian

If I have to go to a Christmas party I have an alcoholic drink before I leave the house. That arms me with a kind of Ready Brek-style glow and gives me confidence. Target your objectives and do what you have to do early, like talk to the host, or the person you want to schmooze. Then you can either get drunk or go. I used to do it the other way round: hide in the corner, get drunk and then do the rounds.

Caroline Flint, politician

Leave when you are most enjoying yourself, as it is usually downhill from there. A disco offers the opportunity to politely get away from someone: “Oh sorry, but I love that song…” And if you don’t know many people, you can break the ice on the dance floor.

Jess Cartner-Morley, fashion editor

You need a safety word, and a wingman who knows the plan. Swing by your friend’s conversations every so often, and if they want an out they drop in the safety word, at which point you explain they are urgently needed elsewhere in the party. The social whirl is a safer place with a safety word.

Marina O’Loughlin, restaurant critic

1. Line your stomach with many sausage rolls. 2. Stick to very dry martinis. 3. Kick the wheels of the managing director’s Porsche while bellowing “Take me home” and when, to your astonishment, she does, steal her gloves and lighter. *NB I’ve done all these things and survived.

Roy Williams, playwright

I used to be shy, but less so now. I actually love Christmas parties. I’ve become more fearless about talking to people. I say: “I don’t know you, you don’t know me, that’s why we’re here.” Mind you, I still don’t know how to get away from boring people.

Kate Reardon, editor, Tatler

If I find myself seated next to a crashing bore I find it gently amusing to interrupt him some time after the first hour of him talking about himself with, “I’m so sorry, but you simply must tell me – when did you first realise you were so extraordinary?” The answer, without fail, is along the lines of: “Well, I guess when I was about 14, I began to realise there was something different about me…”

Jon Ronson, writer and broadcaster

Here’s a trick my wife taught me. She knows how much I hate parties. She said: “If you want to leave a party early without offending anyone, just be unbelievably friendly for the first 10 minutes. Compliment everyone on how nice they look, nod, fascinated, at everything anyone says, and then you can leave and everyone will still like you.” So that’s what I do. For 10 minutes I am Stephen Fry and then, like Keyser Söze, I am gone.

Steve Pemberton, actor

Get in early with your excuse. I’ll tend to say something about a babysitter. If you’ve made a dramatic excuse to get out of a party, make sure you keep track of it – if your fifth grandparent has died you’re in trouble.

Yotam Ottolenghi, restaurateur

Wrap yourself up in a duvet and emerge only when the season’s over. Failing that, take a good book with you and hide in the loo.

Kirsty Wark, Newsnight presenter

I love a good party, but my tip is to “pre-game”. Not in the sense that my children do, the opposite, actually – banana on toast or some other suitable stomach-lining food, so that when you get there you are less likely to crash and burn early.

Jacqui Smith, former home secretary

When I used to go to lots of work functions, I had a technique I used with my husband. We practised a look and if I made that look at him, he would come over and tell me I had an urgent phone call. You can only do this with somebody you trust, otherwise you might misread the look.

David Mitchell, comedian

Alcohol is the key to surviving those lots-of-people-standing-around-talking-to-each-other parties. Without alcohol, they make no sense. Standing in a noisy room, thinking of things to say to acquaintances for hours on end is an absurd pastime which I can’t believe anyone could enjoy while also in a state to legally drive a car. But booze works on small talk like ecstasy on rave music – it gives something oppressive and repetitive the illusion of being entertaining.