Much ado about dos as stags and hens lay down their weapons and join hands

OH, what a to-do about dos. I should, at the outset of this thesis or lecture, define my terms. I don’t mean any old do. I mean stag and hen dos. You roll your eyes. Yes, everybody hates them. Everybody’s been on one. A “do”, if I might hold up the narrative further with footnotes, is a more homely term for “party”, the most frightening word in the English language. I dread them all: house (the worst), dinner, birthday, political.

It’s nearly 20 years since I was at a house party, apart from one small gathering of seven, and that was in my own home so I couldn’t get out of it. The one 20 years ago did, however, afford me a most delicious experience of freedom. It came after I decided I had to get out, and so dreeped doon a bathroom drainpipe and made good my escape.

The party house was near the sea and, as I breathed in the heady maritime ozone and left the suppurating racket behind me, I felt like an animal freed from captivity. That’s why I peed all over the street: marking my territory, don’t you know?

I don’t know what it is about parties that makes me so uncomfortable. I seem to get overwhelmed by all the hubbub and the faces, and the way that normally reserved and decent people mutate into gregarious performers. I take them aside and whisper urgently in their ear: “What on Earth has got into you? Enjoying yourself like this!”

When someone shouts “Party!” in gleeful anticipation of same, there arises in my gullet a tsunami of vomit that I’d gladly spray all over the speaker.

So, where do I stand on stag parties? I am, of course, against them. Yet I will own that they’re not so bad as house parties since at least they usually take place in pubs, where I’m generally happier among all the hubbub and faces. Odd, that.

I think it’s because gregarious performance in pubs is more subdued and less intimate. Pubs can even be quite miserable and so are a more authentic and enjoyable reflection of human life.

However, I speak of stag parties in the past tense, before the more recent trend of dressing up and themes, which are not for the likes of us. And, indeed, not for the likes of decent ratepayers in cites prone to hosting them.

The gaudily attired participants tend to over-indulge and to become raucous, leaving ordinary, decent drunkards to have fits of the vapours and wish they’d all pipe down.

I say all this as preamble – yes, here it comes, the point! – to news that tourism chiefs and holiday firms are reporting that betrothed individuals are ditching the singlesex lash-ups in favour of more civilised joint nights out as they don’t want to split up their friendship groups.

But surely this goes against the whole point of such proceedings?

It’s supposed to be the “last night of freedom” for both adversaries. After they’re hitched, they can have joint dos or, more likely, dinner-parties. Oh dear, I’m going to up-chuck again … .

Dinner parties: more grown-up affairs in which small groups of smugly normal couples drink a modicum of wine and eat food soaked in over-rich, cloying sauces from recipes misread in big books written by celebrity chefs.

But, before that, there’d be the

“sten do”, as the new joint staghen parties have been dubbed (presumably in preference to “hag do”).

Let me give you the facts of life: men behave differently when women are around – they act like prats – and I’m sure the opposite holds true too. The reason is that they’re hoping to place their legs in a position not unadjacent to those of the person of the opposite gender.

Ultimately, this can lead to marriage, meaning more sten dos and the increased disruption of normal drunken life in our city centres. And so it goes on. And it will continue to do so while the current regrettable method of human reproduction remains the norm.

Antiques Roadshow host Fiona

Bruce has voiced her frustration at the reserved reaction of members of the public whose artefacts are given large valuations.

Discerning a British dislike of talking about money, she says in yon Radio Times: “When someone is given an absolutely stonking value they tend to say ‘Hmmm’.

“Whereas in the American version, people actually faint … It’s a bit frustrating.”

I get her point … up to a point. In fact, in Britain, part of the show’s attraction is watching lucky members of the public trying to cover up their elation and surprise.

Get it wrong and the video goes viral, resulting in your becoming an outcast in your community, despite being the proud owner of a £35,000 antique ear wax remover once used by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

If you’re planning to take your allegedly Victorian potty or Sumerian Post-It note to a roadshow, my advice is to keep a stiff upper lip at the valuation.

If it’s a biggie, try not to faint.

Then, on returning to the privacy of your own but and ben, run round the living room punching the air and shouting, “I’m rich! I’m ruddy rich!”

IHEARD of an English couple the other day who have just reduced the price of their house for the third time so desperate are they to sell and return. The house – honey stone, four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a pool and about three acres of ground – sits close to one of the ‘beaux villages de France’ and has been renovated to a high standard.

The wood floors of the drawing room meld into the tiles of the kitchen; bathrooms have top of the range white sanitary ware and outside, two flagged stone terraces are wide enough for some rather stylish entertaining.

The grounds or the ‘parc’ as it is called here have been tended to by a weekly gardener and the familiar random plantings of chestnut, willow trees, fir and mimosa give way to a small orchard of cherry, plum, almond and persimmon.

Nothing disturbs the eye, for the land dips and rises to the distance and in past times I have sat there as a heat haze enveloped the hills in a shimmering haze, listening to the splashes and shrieks from the pool.

Do I detect a touch of lust as you read my words on another grey and drizzly day? A yearning for another life, another place where there truly is time to simply stand and stare?

Well, it can be yours for a mere 200,000 euros and will probably go for 175,000 euros or even slightly under – just over £152,000 at today’s rate.

And no, there isn’t a catch, no nasty surprises to uncover, no crippling annual taxes, no homicidal neighbours or muck spreading farmers.

That is just the way it is and has been for a good ten years or so. Leaving the European Union is just the final nail in the property coffin.

Sure, there are parts of France where prices have held – sort of – and are selling to those who want to establish residency and its guarantees before the cut-off date.

But not that many. The hardest lesson for those who’ve bought, renovated and now want to sell, is that French property is not an investment. Don’t expect to make a killing now even if it seemed a steal at the time.

Just accept that the new bathrooms, new kitchen and even pipework were done for your pleasure not to add value when you come to sell, then there will be no disappointments.

The couple selling the house described have always been fairly realistic on that score but now as derisory offers come in, they have a low-level nausea at what they’re about to do….if lucky.

They’ve realised that to buy somewhere close to at least one of their grown-up children they will be lucky to buy a small one-bedroomed apartment.

One can see the despair – not too dramatic a word – etched in their faces on the return from house hunting trips.

They settle back on their terrace and resign themselves, partly pleased, to another summer of long days and short, sweet nights. They cannot imagine themselves back in a flat, their collected treasures sold or given away. They cannot imagine living in a place where the view from the window is of streets and other houses – feel claustrophobic at the mere thought of it.

And as for the two rescue dogs, the cats and the hens – well, they’ll deal with that when they have to; when there is no going back.

Perhaps, like me, you ask ‘But why? Why do you have to leave it all?’

I know the answer before I ask because I’ve heard it so many times. The grandchildren. It is always the wife who itemises all they are missing; the weekly, perhaps daily contact; being there for birthdays and holidays….being needed.

The husband, like many men, frankly has no strong feelings on the matter but over the years of their marriage, he has learned that an unhappy wife makes an unhappy life.

I have two grandchildren, one three and a half, one six months. I have seen the older one three times and the baby not at all. If I were still allowed to fly,

I probably would have seen them several times for I love London and any excuse, but there we are. Perhaps I am an unnatural grandmother in that birthdays and presents are not important to me, so I forget.

Unnatural in that the thought of a day spent with a crying baby and a fractious toddler fills me with horror not with yearning.

Of course, I like them well enough but I don’t know them so I have no real idea if they’re lovable or not.

Actually, it may surprise you, but I get on rather well with children for I don’t treat them as petted pups to be spoken to in a sing song patronising voice.

No, I give them the respect of asking their views and opinions and listen gravelly to their answers and I find they respond to that, as do we all.

I’ve stopped explaining myself to those like this woman who asks: ‘But don’t you miss them? Don’t you want to be there to see them growing up?’

By saying no, it seems I shock them. I always do. So now I nod sympathetically and wish them well in their hoped-for new life.

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