She likes parties, not hosting them

Actually there are a considerable number of things that get me in a tizzy, misuse of the apostrophe and people who wear flipflops in inappropriate weather being just two guaranteed to have me tutting like a grandmother.

But yes, hosting things is right at the top of the tizz-ometer.

I hate having parties.

In theory it's all very delightful; believing oneself to be a hybrid of Margo from The Good Life and Bridget Jones' mother, wafting around in a Grecian chiffon maxi dress with a tray of mini-gherkins and cocktail onions ensuring everyone is only a trifle-serving away from having the absolute time of their life and never wanting to go home.

But rarely does my life ever bear much semblance to The Good Life (or my bottom to Felicity Kendal's, more's the pity).

I don't keep a goat, I live in Camden not Surbiton (the difference is 500 emo kids getting underage tattoos), and I don't have the kind of friends who can be kept happy for a night by mini vol-au-vents and a chat about Mr Next Door's promotion.

The rather obvious obstacle to this dream, of course, is that I'm 19 and not 59 '” a hardship I'm gradually learning to deal with, though it isn't easy and my desire to wear crimpolene and a rain mate grows stronger every day.

Having a party, or anything vaguely resembling a party, is one of those situations where the amount of fun being had by other people is inversely proportional to the amount you're having yourself.

Thus it always seems for any shindig to be reasonably successful, you yourself must be bright red and collapsed over a dip selection, breathing into a paper bag.

It puts me in mind of my dear friend Hannah (frequent regular in this column, not least because she throws a tantrum otherwise), who over 18 years of scary academic amazingness has patented "exam redness".

She passes them all with flying colours, but has to have a minor breakdown and fit of spectacular rosacea in order to do so.

Aware that I ought to stop this whine-wagon just before it reaches true Grumpy Old Women territory, I do actually like parties.

I like going to other people's, forgetting to B.Y.O.B., commandeering the music and leaving before the cleaning up gets underway.

But this is always done with the happy gusto of someone very glad they are not the host, who can normally be found trying to glue a Ming vase back together with one hand and steering someone away from being sick in the laundry basket with the other.

Which leaves no spare hands for passing round sausages on sticks, potential Mrs Ledbetters might note.

I'd like to think, though, that even for the most hardened hostesses with the mostesses, the Mrs Dalloways and Sarah Fergusons and Elton Johns of this world, there must be that point in their fabulously fabulous soires where they secretly wish everyone would just shove off home and leave them to watch Dancing On Ice in their dressing gown. Surely?

Possibly the best party I've ever hosted was my 10th birthday sleepover, when I magically managed to become really ill about half an hour after everyone arrived and went to bed for the rest of the night, leaving my guests to have the time of their lives without me.

Which they did, and spent the rest of year five regaling me with anecdotes from the night that ended "guess you had to be there'¦ oh wait, you were."

You can imagine my horror and mild amusement, then, when I recently found I had unwittingly agreed to be secretary on the "social committee" for my halls site.

Me. Planning parties.

Not just this, but taking minutes at meetings about planning parties. Writing emails about planning parties.

Swanning about at said parties telling guests, satisfied or otherwise, that "yar, I planned it all, don't you know?"

I'm getting Hannah's panic rosacea just thinking about it'¦ which reminds me of another friend, the fantastically ambivalent Joey. I should learn to live by her motto, the one that kept her safely out of the party-planning-charity-fundraiser-organising-fte-arranging-cake-baking spectrum for all of our high school years: "Don't put your name on stupid lists".

Pass me that paper bag, and a cocktail onion if there are any.