IT AIN’T WHAT YOU DO, IT’S the WAY THAT YOU DO IT

I was in London last week. The main focus of my trip was a belated house-warming party given by a couple who have finally domiciled themselves and their children in a big enough home, just before the elder child leaves for university. Since we sold our own flat in town two or three years ago, we have both been obliged to rely on the kindness of friends who have a spare room, or at least a spare bed. Happily, neither of us wants (yet) for ready invitations. But equally neither of us wants to outstay our welcome, to miss that moment when our hosts and/or hostesses start to whisper behind their hands “can’t we be ‘away’ next time he wants to come and stay?”

These things can be delicate. One of my keener benefactors – who anyway has been promising without issue to come and stay with us again for more than a year – was overdue for the benefit of my own lodging but there was a question mark over the party: would she have been invited and, if not, would she expect me to take her as my (uninvited) guest? I decided to avoid this bear trap. There was a pair of likelier candidates who were happy enough to offer their spare room (a relatively comfortable one; at my age, these things weigh). So I enquired discreetly of the party-thrower if she had indeed invited them, wanting (as I did) to avoid a ticklish situation in which the houseguest goes off to the party, leaving the host(ess) languishing at home. “You are wonderfully tactful,” she declared in her email, confirming that they had indeed been invited too. I’m not sure that I was being other than modestly wary.

The party was on the Saturday evening. I wanted to stay for a few days so it made sense to travel up to London on the Saturday afternoon and take my few days after the party, thus avoiding the bad train travel times (Friday – expensive; Sunday – delays). It meant that I was able to go straight to the house where I was staying, rather than having a day and evening in town before rolling up at the lodging shortly before bedtime, which is what I do when I travel up in the week. Thus I could take a bouquet for my hostess from our fabulous local florist, who knows exactly what flowers to choose for surviving a couple of hours on train and tube. I don’t like to arrive empty-handed but, if you’ve been in town all day and sat in a theatre all evening, few gifts still glow with rude health. Even chocolates are a little wilted from a couple of hours in a bag in a theatre cloakroom. And I rather baulk at taking wine, which smacks of students’ parties. It’s hard to know just what wine is appropriate, unless you’re very sure of the victim’s taste. So unless I’m going straight to the house, there is often no alternative but to make some gesture at the end of the stay.

The flowers were well received, as were (overwhelmingly so) the flowers I had had delivered ahead of the party. Said party was a total delight and its hostess and I yakked on the phone for an hour on the Sunday. I called her on my mobile, not wanting to tie up the household phone for a chat call, and as a result I had to be sparing for the rest of my trip because the battery had run very low.

When I got in late on the Monday evening, I heard that the party hostess had been trying to reach me by phone: her mother had died that morning. I decided it was too late to call, but missed her next morning and again during the day and we didn’t get to speak until late on the Tuesday evening. The funeral would be on the Thursday and she hoped I would come. I had thought ahead about this. I felt I had to decline because I had brought no clothes with me remotely suitable for a funeral. My host had already offered me the loan of a tie but that, I felt, would not have been sufficient to cover my discomfort. The bereaved daughter declared that she and her sister wouldn’t mind how I was dressed. “But I would mind” I said and she saw that this was conclusive.

Not everyone observes it these days, but I have always held that the immediately bereaved are the focus of attention at a funeral, the bride and (to a lesser degree) her mother at a wedding, the parents at a christening or bris, the confirmand at a confirmation or Bar or Bat Mitzvah, the graduate at a graduation and so on. It is not the purpose of the guests to be conspicuous, either by commission or by omission. It is as heinous to be underdressed as overdressed on these occasions. Better not to attend at all than to pull focus from those on whom the spotlight should fall (if I may mix the movie-making metaphors).

You could say that this whole piece is about an observance that is almost lost in the me-me-me scream of contemporary life: etiquette. The unwritten rules that govern social behaviour still mean something, even if the great majority are not even aware that they exist. I cannot trace whoever it was who first observed that “a gentleman is never unknowingly rude”, an exquisite aperçu that leaves on the table the certainty that asperity is never inadvertent. But whoever it was remains so right.

PS: in my last entry, I misspelled Lord Carlile. This was not the rudeness of a cad but the misapprehension of an ignoramus. I beg his pardon.