A hooley, the craic and why do cab drivers think you like music they like?

It's funny in a way, how as the world turns, customs, mores, attitudes change and not always for the better and to some degree, you forget those things which once seemed so natural. I was thinking over the weekend whether such changes occur largely in affluent, large populations, such as you often find in big cities, but in smaller less affluent, often rural, communities often change seems to pass them by.

I was reminded of this at the weekend at a birthday party. Now I don't usually do parties, the prospect of more that six people in a room brings me out in a rash and like as not occasions a retreat to some dark cupboard somewhere accompanied by a bottle of vino collapso and sometimes a glass. It isn't that I'm anti social, I generally like people, nor that I lack social skills; I am just as capable as the next man of discussing relativity with someone while simultaneously undoing a complete stranger's bra strap, drinking a glass of wine and smoking a cigarette and usually fixing the host's plumbing too. (Always take a wrench to parties, a basin spanner too if you have one. They come in sooooo handy!) . It's just the numbers that disturb me.

Now there were well more people gathered in a semi in Surrey than I would even think of being a part of, but she came to mine so I thought it would be very insulting not to return the favour. So with my prozac, valium and vino collapso, I assumed THEY had glasses, I fetched up on the doorstep. It was largely a family affair, aunts, uncles, 'uncles', parents, siblings and many had flown over from Ireland amidst delays, cancellations etc to be there. So it was an Irish party! Now I've visited a few places but no-one parties quite like the Irish, especially when they're older. Somehow the 'craic' just gets larger and larger the older they get. Personally I think it's the memory of the potato famine that does it; carpe diem!

I can't quite remember when, the host had liberally poured quantities of Remy Martin Reserve Cognac into my glass throughout the evening, but someone started singing. And then everyone joined in and for hours there were Irish folk ballads meandering out of the windows into snowy Epsom, almost as if someone had teleported some Galway pub into so, so English suburbia. Really the most enchanting evening. All that was missing were the plaintive pipes of Paddy Moloney (the Chieftains) who is forever etched into my brain as the only accompianment to Irish folk music. Ah well Paddy, you were in my head at least when they did 'Carrickfergus'.

Now outside of an occasional bash where a professional or semi professional musician was present and a musical instrument was to hand or when I get to see a particular person and she succumbs to a request for just the sound of her voice (she's Irish too :), this doesn't seem to happen here at all anymore. And yet it used to be so common at gatherings of the English working class. It wasn't the native folk music though, it was generally turn of the (20th) century music hall stuff. Where did it go? Where did the idea that you made your own fun go? When households had a cheap 'joanna' (upright piano, ours had a faulty 'E' above middle 'C') and family (or otherwise) gatherings were occasions when everyone could make a fool of themselves. When did they turn into 'huddling round the TV', boombox techno, boring conversation about how the crash has wiped thousands, tens of thousands, off your investments? When was the last time you played 'charades'? Did we all get so affluent, so intellectual, that no-one feels comfortable with 'do-it-yourself' anymore? Perhaps.

So thank you, Pat and Pete (and Deirdre and MC Uncle Ernie) for a lovely evening. If I had a voice, I would have sung, even the parting lovers, him off to war and her singing "For the queen she do need seamen" Think about it! :) (No really, old English folk song), but I don't so I've learned to keep my mouth shut among people who can!

As a Parthian shot, perhaps even a digression, I should add that my own (shared) equivalent started around 6:00pm on Friday when some friends arrived from out of town (the pre-party party). It was temporarily suspended between 3:00am and 9:00am Saturday (for sleep). Food prep (and wine guzzling) from 9:00am until 3:00pm Saturday when the party started until 7:30am on Sunday when after a couple of espressos, bed beckoned. The post-party party started at 3:00pm on Sunday and finished at 2:00am on Monday. My liver crawled up and tried to throttle me just as I was about to leave for work at 8:00 am on Monday. For someone who doesn't like parties I can sure as hell engage when I have to :) It was the best weekend weather-wise of that summer so most of all this took place in the garden. Some neighbours (who had been invited but chose to stay at home) were not amused :) Hell, you're only fifty once!

Oh, and cab drivers? All the way there, awful pop music! Even the Bhangra radio station would have been better!