I’m not a huge fan of fancy dress. I tend to get it wrong, somehow – to go either too far or otherwise not far enough, and invariably in the wrong direction. A few examples that come to mind: turning up to a black-tie birthday in jeans and a hoody, as a ‘drug dealer’, and handing out skittles to people before I spoke to them. Turning up to a black-tie birthday in a burqua. (The theme was black-tie with a hint of Arabian Nights). Turning up to my Mother’s Christmas party as a hooker.*
However, I have decided that this is the year I finally crack social codes (once and for all, guys, so this blog will soon be over), so I am approaching an upcoming fancy dress party with enormous** enthusiasm. The theme is ‘Toga party’. I am in charge of buying the sheets. (“We can just use our own sheets,” I pointed out, initially. “All my sheets are fitted sheets,” my friend replied. “How unnecessarily fancy,” I thought, until I looked at my own sheets).
Along with the extraordinary advances in hand driers in public bathrooms (the improvement curve on this is the steepest I have seen, in any thing, so far in my own lifetime, and I wish I had one of the older public hand driers to show my children, to explain that they ‘don’t know they’re born’, in a similar manner to when my Father would laboriously remove his wooden tennis racket from its press), it seems that the world has turned its back on the cumbersome yet multi-purpose flat sheet, and enthusiastically greeted the future.***
Which is all well and good, and as a still very young and not-at-all-wedded to the 2000s sort of person, I wholeheartedly approve. It does, however, mean that I remain not a huge fan of fancy dress, and will spend much of today traipsing round Homebase, looking for the elusive ‘perfect toga sheet’. (I thought I’d done well on my first trip there, yesterday, but arrived home to discover I’d bought 6 cot sheets, rather than 2 adult sized sheets). It is looking likely that this blog will continue for some time.
*This one wasn’t entirely my fault. The theme was Bond, I think, and I thought my dress looked lovely until I overheard my Mother asking my Godmother why I had decided to come dressed as a hooker. To be honest, I was so thrilled that my lack of costume had been misconstrued as making an effort with the fancy dress that I began telling people that was indeed my “costume”.
**The socially appropriate amount of enthusiasm.
***Signs we are in the Future: Fitted sheets, excellent hand-driers, a slimline Chris Pratt and Turtle from Entourage.
unfashionablylost 