Midsummer Party

Above: there was something about the cover of the latest National Geographic that I found disturbing. It bothered me for some days. Until I remembered, in my grandparent’s house in Norfolk, a pile of ancient National Geographic magazines with one of them featuring an article on the summer solstice at Stonehenge.

Saturday 21st June - the Longest Day. The day of Marie-Astrid’s Midsummer Party (although Midsummer is not actually until the 24th). In the evening I drove over to the town where Marie-Asrid lives, on the western edge of the county.

Marie-Astrid’s parties always have an unexpected element. Sometimes they are biggish events with seventy-plus people milling around. Other times they are the same small familiar group that meets up month after month, year after year.

The other notable aspect of her parties is the number of “new” people she manages to produce. You can almost guarantee that there will be at least one person you havn’t met before. Just as abruptly as she takes people up, she drops them again, so these “new” people tend to disappear after a few weeks.

I was the first to arrive. Marie-Astrid’s house is a big suburban 1970s building, plain but comfortable, with large badly-proportioned rooms. Across the back of the house is a long lounge about fifteen feet wide, but because of its length the room looks narrow and awkward.



Matching the long lounge is a long lean-to conservatory where a table had been laid for eight places (so obviously this was going to be one of the more intimate parties). I talked to Marie-Astrid’s partner Dave while Marie-Astrid was upstairs with her six-year-old daughter who was having a sleepover with her friend Lucy. The doorbell rang and Sharon came in - overweight, opinionated and (I remembered from a previous encounter) obnoxious.



Next to arrive were Sophie and Nadia, work colleagues of Marie-Astrid, both aged in their mid-twenties, slim, long-legged (Sophie a strawberry-blonde, Nadia with long black hair). I got Sophie and Nadia glasses of punch, the cloth on the side table decorated with representations of the Danish flag (Marie-Astrid has Scandinavian ancestry). Dave talked about how well he was doing despite the credit crunch - as financiers always claim to be doing well, it was impossible to know whether “the worst has passed” or not.

Marie-Astrid came downstairs having changed for dinner. We sat around talking for about a quarter of an hour. The doorbell rang and Emily and Dan came into the house.

Emily is only aged about forty, but her attitudes and manners are those of a past age. She always wears long formal dresses which makes other women feel she is trying to upstage them (whereas in reality she probably doesn’t like to show her legs in public). She is very shy, and together with her dignified personality this is often misinterpreted as condescending froideur.



Marie-Astrid lit candles all around the lounge and conservatory. The candles had little Norwegian flags stuck into them. The two six-year-olds appeared, wanting to see everyone, but Dave ordered them upstairs with such sternness I was surprised Marie-Astrid didn’t rebuke him (they are not his children).

A feature of Marie-Astrid’s past Midsummer parties has been the Danish cuisine, but this year there was a change. Dave had given her a copy of a Nigella cookbook, and so we had: green beans with almonds; pasta shells stuffed with spinach and ricotta; mashed sweet potato; crispy onion rings; honey chocolate cake; zabaglione. Marie-Astrid also produced a huge home-made ice-cream, turned out of an elaborate mould and decorated with angelica (“basically it’s just cream and icing sugar”). To drink a bottle of trockenbeerenauslese - although it was very sweet it seemed to go well with the vegetarian meal (I made one glass last the whole meal).

Dave had warned me that the punch was very strong, but Sharon didn’t seem to have received this information. Obviously tipsy, over dinner she told us about her experiences internet dating, and her amorous meetings with “Fat Fingered Sean”. Emily said (dryly) that the only safe way to meet other people was to be introduced to them by one’s friends.

We talked about the economic situation. We talked about the government. Sharon talked about three closures of local companies - she works in a government unit that counsels employees involved in medium-scale redundancies.

“Most of them won’t travel to get new jobs” she said dismissively, as if washing her hands of them.

By this stage in the evening I had reached a point where I was determined to disagree with everything Sharon said, so I praised the loyalty these workers had towards their communities, and their decision to stay put.

“It’s their right to stay where they are” I said (other conversations were going on at the same time - it wasn’t as if our bickering was disrupting the party).

“Actually, it’s not their right” said Sharon. “They have to be prepared to take jobs that are offered to them. They just want everything handed to them on a plate.”

Then Sharon told us the “inside story” about council attempts to force a bus route through a pedestrian area. I opposed this bus route without really knowing what I was talking about. Sharon became very agitated about the pensioners who need the bus to get to the main post office (I pointed out that they wouldn’t need to go to the main post office if all the small post offices hadn’t been closed - four in the town we were discussing).

After the meal we had coffee by candlelight at the other end of the conservatory where four sofas had been arranged in a square. Outside it began to rain, and despite being the longest day the sky became dark from the rain clouds. The children came downstairs again and were given some ice cream.

Later we moved into the long lounge. I played Wii tennis with Nadia and then Sharon (room for manoeuvre was so limited she was hitting me with her Wii racket - possibly not accidentally). At the other end of the room everyone else danced around to Kylie (In My Arms), Bass hunter (All I Ever Wanted), Darren Styles etc.

These songs are the ones I remembered most from the party (I don’t usually listen to dance music):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE8EAqneUbM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l--UJwBFCV0