Party For Stalybridge. 12the July Cont....

We go to the Party. 

I am wearing my dress. I am not at all happy in my dress. 

I feel like a Man in Drag.

I have no idea why I always feell like a Man in Drag when I wear a dress, but I do.

I have dyed my legs brown and I smell of fake tan. Fake tan smells like rather old digestive biscuits. My hair was being rather stupid so I have tied it up but it still looks rather stupid.

Oh well.

Everyone is at the Party. Everyone is very sad that Claire and Paul are going to live in Stalybridge. 

Paul is a Very Good Host. He is wearing a white linen shirt and he has spilt some red wine down his front, but he can’t stop to change because he is attending to his guests. Paul has very good manners. Claire is looking frail and vague and strangely happy. 

The Party is going with a bang. 

The Jazz band are very good. 

Luckily no one dances. 

Skeins of teenagers waft into the kitchen, appropriate bottles of wine, and waft out again. The teenagers are gathered on the roof terrace. Nowadays, teenagers are very beautiful. I am sure they were not so beautiful when we were young.

I talk to Claire’s brother. Claire’s brother is my Kathy Burke. He isn’t actually at all like Kathy Burke but Stephen Fry says that if Kathy Burke arrives at a party the party is, for him,  immediately  better. 

I am a bit worried about Claire’s brother. He is going to Sweden with Zac and Giles and my father to race the Giant Sailing Boat. 

In order to do this, he has to go and stay at my parent’s house in Cornwall to practice his Foredecker Skills.  

I am worried that this will be a Baptism of Fire.

Claire’s brother assures me that it will be great and that he is really looking foreward to it. 

Claire’s brother has green eyes. It is quite unusual to have green eyes.

Frasr has brought his guitar to the party. As well as being a very Good Actor. Fraser is a Very Good Guitarist. 

The Jazz Band pack up and go to join the Teenagers on the Roof Terrace.

Fraser is not sure he should play his guitar. He is feeling unaccountably shy. He wants someone to sing with him. I find someone to sing with him.

Bryn is very good at singing and he says he will sing Beatles songs with Fraser. 

Bryn and his wife Split up and had Affairs. She was a Lesbian in a Bloomsbury way and he had a Heart Attack. Now, they are back together again. 

It is very romantic.

Much later we go home. John carries Maisie through the darkened streets. We imagine Suicide Green without Claire and Paul. We imagine their house being redecorated by the Very Thin German woman. 

We can’t imagine any of it.