The cats did not enjoy the party. Our Ginger crawled into people's laps, including the one person who doesn't like cats, tried to steal the fishy nibbles, and started dribbling on somebody's skirt. In the end he had to be put out in the hall until after lunch when the food was all safely locked away in the kitchen, and spent the whole time sitting the other side of the glass door, looking mournful. Once he was allowed in again he devoted himself to trying to put as much white and ginger fur as possible on everybody's clothes. The big tabby sat in the hall looking wistful as well, and the two Essex originals were nowhere to be seen. They're happy now, though, as I have sat down in front of the fire instead of locking them out of the kitchen while I cook, or charging about with a vacuum cleaner. Our Ginger was allowed to have the toppings from three fishy nibbles that were left over. He likes smoked salmon, but he'd better not go getting ideas.
As noon approached I noticed a lot of cat fluff stuck to one wall of the sitting room, but it was too late by then to vacuum it off, so I decided to hope that people wouldn't notice, or wouldn't mind if they did. Other than that it all looked quite clean and tidy, by our standards. We have pets, open fires, and clatter in and out of the house in our working boots. Anybody who really isn't comfortable in that environment is probably not going to enjoy knowing me anyway, and anybody who has known me for any length of time is not going to be under any illusions about my general level of tidiness. (I have a theory that some people are naturally tidy, and some just aren't. One of my colleagues must have had the tidiness fairy godmother wave her wand over his cradle at his christening. He can spend all day moving large pots of plants around, and at the end of it his cream coloured chinos are still clean. If I touch anything with any possibility of mess or stickiness, be it paint, marmalade, honey, compost, or fountain pen ink, I invariably end up with some of it smeared on me, and the room, even when I'm trying to be really careful).
There were two last minute cancellations, due to illness, so we just crammed round the dining table without my bringing the kitchen table through, and I didn't need my 4.5 metres of red sheeting bought as an impromptu table cloth. It was a shame not to see the absentees, but it has been a rotten winter for illnesses. The red sheeting will come in useful sometime, maybe at Christmas.
There is a dismal school of political and social thought springing up at the moment, that says that the Systems Administrator and I should not be living in a house large enough to hold a lunch party for eight or twelve people. We have surplus bedrooms (most of which are full of books, so if we could rebuild the house the same size but with an enormous library and only two rooms originally designated as bedrooms I suppose we'd be OK on that score). It would be for society's good that we go and live a nice little bungalow or cottage, and yield our bedrooms up to a Family. And we can't afford to heat it, so it would be for our own good, though I'd have thought that as sentient adults we should be allowed to decide for ourselves whether we would rather be spacious but cold, or cramped but warm. I find it an especially irritating message from the nanny state because I'm sure the cabinet only imagine it applying to the great middling masses, not people like them. I don't suppose David Cameron expects his widowed mother to go and live in a nice little bungalow, or that George Osborne expects Sir Peter Osborne and his wife to give up what the Evening Standard described as their 'eclectically furnished, five-bedroom house in Lansdowne Road in Notting Hill, a lively home with high ceilings, crammed with modern paintings and art work, 18th-century engravings and Italian furniture'. We don't run to the art collection or Italian furniture, but still appreciate having room to have people round, once in a while.
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