Car Keys

These cocktail parties are trouble, Bombay or Bengal all the same; all that babbling and chatter; swigging Bangalore Torpedos and assessing the latest Ginger Rodgers film.

What to wear?

I want to wear my formal black and red uniform, it tends to keep the riff-raff at bay. My wife says it makes me look visible. But at a cocktail party it looks pompous. I can’t have that, I’m supposed to be of the modern genre, supporting moves to Indian independence and equality and all that.

Maybe I should wear my tennis outfit. It would look casual, accepting, one of the boys. Difficult to carry off, though. Need a certain savoir faire to wear tennis togs to a cocktail party. Of course, that actor chappie Errol Flynn got away with it when he visited Calcutta. Great ballooning shorts he wore. I better resist appearing at the governor’s cocktail party in tennis shorts, my wife would have a fit.

What can I wear? I need to convey a military bearing. My Brigade Commander’s khaki uniform with a couple of medals dangling about could suit the occasion. Not too showy, and hides my flab. Eileen Corpustle mentioned to Horace Wobbler that I look rather racy in my field outfit. But Eileen Corpustle has a rather odd way of talking. She told me she was out riding on the Punjab when a tiger jumped up behind her on the horse and started licking her ear.

I can’t wear my light blue suit. They make a man invisible especially if he has fair hair and a ginger moustache. He presents as a cocktail glass floating about the room.

I wonder if my wife will wear her bottle green dress. In it she looks lovely, it matches her golfing tan. I daren’t ask her to wear it she will explode and ask me what’s wrong with her new beige dress with the lily motif.

I could wear my baggy dinner jacket. Plenty of room for cigars in the breast pocket of my dinner jacket.

And I could wear my bow tie. But bow ties make a man look intelligent, even intellectual. That will never do. People may ask me my opinion of Mahatma Ghani or worse the Times crossword. My wife always quietly sniggers when I fumble for an answer.

I can’t go open necked. It would appear as though I was completely nude.

I like Eileen Corpustle, she’s bright and chirpy. She leans into one and speaks sideways with her lips contorted towards the ear.

After emptying a bucket of Bangalore Torpeoes down her throat, she talks to the men while nestling with her forearm in the man’s chest to stop herself toppling over. She’s from New Zealand where this support technique is considered the height of sophistication. It might be sophisticated but her nestling forearms plays hell with my cigars. No, my baggy dinner jacket is out.

There’s nothing for it. I have no choice. I shall have to resort to my khakis.