Why dinner will never qualify for party status

Date Published: {J}

They used to define a rural Irishman as a fella who eats his dinner in the middle of the day. And I’m all for that, because if you have the dinner at that time, there’s very little chance it will turn into a party.

And I absolutely hate dinner parties, sitting around someone’s kitchen or dining room, drinking wine on hard chairs when you could have just as easily had a bite of tea and headed out for a few pints instead.

In fairness, I’m no fan of house parties of any sort and in this second half of my life I would find it hard to think of a less tantalising prospect that going to an overcrowded abode, trying to find a quiet corner and then having to sleep on an inflatable bed when I could as easily have been tucked up in my own.

Indeed it may well that parties, in all shapes and forms other than a spontaneous one in a pub, might be the problem – for this and many other reasons, those who know me have no problem suggesting that I’m odd.

It must be said that this party phobia is no small bone of contention in our house because it limits our hosting opportunities and it curtails where we can go – but such is the price to be paid for having dinner during working hours and your tea when you get home.

I also have to acknowledge that I may well be in a club of one, because – even in these recessionary times – we Irish are competing at the Dinner Party Olympics like we were to the manor born.

We seem love dinner parties, sitting around and shooting the breeze with the remnants of our repast lying like a corpse in repose in front of us. Candles lighting, music playing, conversation flowing – it’s a nightmare.

Maybe it’s the free wine that does it – bring one, get seven free – but why lengthen out a procedure that, if you were dining on an ordinary day, would take half an hour into a four hour marathon?

We’ve had one dinner party in almost 15 years of marriage and that was for a good friend’s special birthday; all of the guests were people I would happily go away on holidays with – indeed I have done that with almost all of them – and they would pass any test you could dream up to qualify as great company.

I wasn’t asked to cook or serve and I wasn’t asked to give up my usual seat; in other words, everything was done to keep any possibility of inconvenience to a minimum. And still I’d rather have gobbled down the lovely dinner and gone out for three pints.

The problem arose again more recently when we were invited to someone’s house for dinner; a lovely couple who you’d look forward to spending time with in any circumstances – but I wondered if we could just all go out instead.

It’s not even about the few pints – although they’re very welcome – and certainly it’s not about the quality of the food. Clearly it’s not about expense either, because it’s much dearer to go out. But it’s probably about something deeply engrained in my DNA.

Dinner in my young days never qualified as a party; it was a function to stave away hunger before you got on with the rest of the day.

At dinner time, you had milk; at tea time, you drank tea. And if you had dinner in the evening back in the days, people almost felt sorry for you because it was the first sign of parental neglect.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.