The party’s over before it’s begun

We were invited then uninvited to a party last week

What happened was this: The recent edict by that illustrious government mouthpiece Prof. Charmaine, that only two households could congregate together, has had farreaching consequences in our neck of the woods. Two days before it came into force our next door neighbour – down – Raymond the hairdresser had met my wife in the street and invited us to “a little bijou get-together next Saturday evening with a few chums at home.”

Why not, I thought at the time, everybody was getting rather homesick – that is, sick of being at home – so a few bevies at someone else’s abode would be most welcome. Besides, as Raymond put it, he wanted his friends to meet his new male… er… personal assistant, Peng (my wife thinks that’s what he said). Peng… whatever, has apparently recently arrived from Ho Chi Min City in Vietnam and, in Raymond’s view: “An absolute treasure.” My wife, somewhat ingenuously, enquired as to what happened to Raymond’s previous… um male assistant, the one from the Philippines. According to her, Raymond’s demeanour changed to frosty as he replied: “I don’t want to talk about “her”, if you don’t mind… it’s still far too raw.”

Anyway the Saturday booze-up party… get-together is off. So we shall just have to drink Peng’s health at home and wait for the PM to give the go-ahead for multi-socialising once again. Personally, I would much prefer continued forced isolation to the chance, the ever increasing chance, of expiring while wired up to a respirator in Mater Dei. The recent advent of the British strain of Covid to our shores is, hopefully, going to deter Onorevoli Bobby from opening up our island any time in the near future. Better a slightly knackered economy than a totally knackered populace.

Writing about one of our neighbours reminds me that I haven’t mentioned our other next door people, Christine and George… George is the one with the combover that, when disturbed, closely resembles a flame from a bonfire in a stiff breeze. Well the reason they have dropped off our radar of late is because George has gone into the strictest form of lockdown known to man. My wife did bump into Christine at the local grocer’s recently and she said that her husband has become beyond paranoid to a state of – what she described as – irrational obsessive psychosis. And no, it’s not his hair – or the lack thereof – it’s all to do with an almost fanatical need to disinfect and seal his home for fear of letting in a single Covid-19 virus. I no longer enjoy a beer of an evening with him on our respective roofs and I don’t believe he has ventured further than his own front door since the inception of the third wave.

However, apropos of none of that, I did learn something about our other neighbour, Raymond, via George – kind of – the other day. I happened to say to my wife something to the effect of: How ironic to see poor old George conserving every hair remaining on his head, while Raymond has a great bouffant thatch on his. My wife snorted and informed me: “That bouffant thatch is actually a wig.” Well bugger me! I never knew that See you learn something new or different every day.