On partying all the time

It has been a month of bone-grinding intensity at work but also of high-kickin’ vivacity after hours, which all leads me to hope I am charming rather than irritating in a state of near-permanent sleep deprivation. Mariella breezed in from the Old Country at the beginning of the month for a fleeting visit, looking fit and magnificent with hair the colour of a pool of blood. She, Archie and I spent a reasonably riotous evening at a sushi restaurant, putting bubbles (Archie’s choice) and chardonnays (Mariella’s) to bed, along with eating sufficient raw fish that I dreamed of a hundred sea-borne souls entering me, and have now crossed over to the side of fishless, seafoodless right. As Archie later said: the best way to give up eating fish is to go out with a bang.

It is hard not to be joyful in Mariella’s company and a year’s separation has given each of us more purchase on ourselves. When later Señor Mojito joined us it was both strange and delightful to be two couples, however irregular our composition, and though the party went on for some hours after I went to bed, it was a well-concluded evening for me.

You may now flash forward to this weekend, on which Nanette and the good señor observed their birthdays on the same day, Easter Saturday. So flat-out have I been at work that the harvestmother had to run an emergency kidnapping mission to enable me to shop for birthday gifts over my lunch hour last week—only a fool would give up her university parking space during working hours. Mission accomplished, the señor and I spent Saturday lunching with his family, in the next neighbourhood over from the ‘Burn, where I was happily set upon by two bichon frises, father and daughter, and Rusty, the large and handsome family dog whose provenance is variously thought to be a mix of boxer, mastiff or Great Dane. The young bichon frise bitch was removed from the action for some action of her own mid-afternoon, in that laid-back, low-hassle manner that is the neighbourhood mating.

In the evening the señor split his time between his own birthday drinks and Nanette’s 40th birthday party, a well-organised, well-executed affair that reminded us all of her talents in event design and her wonderful personal style. Resplendent in red, with a haircut so angular and contemporary Posh Spice should hang her head in shame, Nanette’s crowning glory was not her coiff but her Cleopatra-styled makeup that cohered around an Eye of Osiris. Dwayne took the masked theme of the evening a step further, assuming the life-size visage of Martin Shaw with the remark, “If you can’t beat him, be him.” (Nanette’s tastes in fandom were set early and have remained singular and consistent over the years. They are also rather contagious.)

It was a chance to meet many people of whom I’ve only heard until now who had made the trip from Auckland, to introduce the señor to my social set, and to celebrate with Nanette the hard-won confidence that comes from a life lived from the inside out. Helium-filled balloons lofted photos from all years of Nanette’s life to the ceiling, and photosets displayed on a table led one guest to ask of Nanette, “is she a hair model?” It was a question that could be seriously posed. Perhaps most moving of all was to see the face of Nanette’s young daughter looking out from the images of her mother at the same age, surmounting the same skinny childhood limbs.

The señor made friends with the strangers with whom we sat, in an unorthodox way that proved highly effective: his opening gambit was “George Bush is the greatest foreign policy president since world war two”*. Sensing the challenge of a devil’s advocate, the piqued parties worked their way from the discontented right to the radical left, debating competitively all the way. I sat and listened and reflected that one could charge money; I also wondered what such incendiary rhetorical devices might do in the context of my extended family in future. But such speculation is idle, and the assembled table’s endorsement of the señor and I as “such a cute couple” did much to buoy my spirits. At my age and of my build, I should take epithets of cuteness wherever I find ‘em.

The soundtrack to the evening was the 1980s pop to which Nanette danced her way across the nightclubs of East Auckland and North London back in the day, and although it didn’t include the track embedded below, it seems an appropriate memorial to a high-energy month.