Advent #18

I don’t know exactly what I was doing twelve months ago but (brace yourself for some hard-hitting satire) I certainly wasn’t at a party!

The ‘Downing Street party’ story was a real cause celebre just two weeks ago (by the Wednesday lunchtime my work colleague was so fed up hearing about it, he changed the radio station in the office – that’s how celebre it was). If I was tremendously cynical I’d suggest it was sidelined by Boris conveniently deciding to make a special Strictly-interrupting Prime Ministerial Covid broadcast, even though the daily press conferences would have been perfectly adequate. (Thank goodness I’m not tremendously cynical.)

“We didn’t have one” quickly became “it wasn’t a party” – but to me, if you’re reclassifying it as ‘an impromptu gathering after work’ or insisting the regulations weren’t enforceable on Crown Land (insert Harry Hill shrugging baffled to camera here) then there clearly WAS a party but you’ve got a list of mealy-mouthed excuses to prove why, on paper, you’ve not done anything wrong.

There’s lots to unpack (although luckily for my blood pressure, it’s more than you can cover in 300 words): the bizarre hedonistic sense that it’s an affront to your basic human rights NOT to have a Christmas Party; the selfishness of not caring about the risks; the utter stupidity to think that in this day and age nobody will find out; and worst of all the arrogance to decide your own rules don’t apply to you.

That’s where my frustrated outrage at this story comes from – it’s certainly not that I feel I’ve somehow missed out by stupidly following the rules. As far as that’s concerned I confess I’ve never understood the appeal of these sorts of events, so in that sense I’m not an interested, um… party.