I went along to a dinner party on Sunday. Richard Berengarten had put me in touch with Jim Haynes, who organises pay–for dinner parties from his weenie flat. It was absolutely ace. The food was good, the people there were excellent. No music, no telly, no distracting crap at all. I passed the poet test: yes, I’ve heard of xxx, yes, I like his work a lot, actually.

The place was packed, it was impossible not to talk to people, the “oops sorry” repeated a few times soon grew into “hello” and “…”. All had something interesting. Conversatees included a concert pianist, a cinema scriptwriter, a fellow computer nerd, and … well, a pretty young lady asked me who I was, so I told her I was her brother. She said she obviously needed to see a head doctor, because she’d forgotten me, so I told her no wonder, I was her head doctor too, and she’d forgotten me in psychological self defence. She then revealed that, actually, she was the doctor. Ooops. First order oops. Thank God she was flying off to India the next day. Er … she may have just told me that to get rid of me.

Ach, I enjoyed the evening, it was great fun, my insane inventions were generally enjoyed :-)

The script writer invited me along to a premier of a play tonight, a new translation of a classic Swedish play by … er … balls, I can’t remember the name, 19th century, highly original at the time, new translation from the original Swedish, you get the picture. Anyway, I barely understood a word, but the main purpose of the invite was the social gathering afterwards. Now, in relative terms, I failed at that. Unlike the dinner party, I felt a little awkward, as normal. However, I did the right thing, I told the leading actor he was superb, and he went all lovey on me, and there is somewhere a photo of me and him being fan and fanned.

One of the play’s actresses was a little old lady. She let her long–haired Yorkshire Terrier wandering around the social. I’m always wary of these yappy little things, although I’ll give this one, it was silent. I fear I’d only notice one do the doggy territory thing when my foot got wet.

I have noticed that roughly half the little old ladies in Paris have Yorkshire Terriers, often in a handbag. I think modern little old English ladies ought to have a dog, say a Great Whippet, to use as steeds to get about the place at barking mad speeds. Mind you, they’d be slower than they could be, the dog would be slowed down by the emergency barrel of sherry.