Growing up, it was made very clear to us that if you RSVPed in the positive to a party, you were absolutely honour-bound to turn up. It was the height of rudeness to chuck. How things have changed. These days, people don’t even bother RSVPing: it’s too difficult. Some are even too lazy to click a thumbs-up on a WhatsApp. More charitably, perhaps they have all suffered collective memory loss, or don’t understand the French.
I know what you do when you get an email invitation, or when somebody texts you with the date and time of a party. You think ‘how nice’, and then do absolutely nothing about it until the week before. Only then do you look at your diary and think: oh, but I’ve got to unpack those boxes of knick-knacks that night; or, I’ve got to take my pet lizard to the vet, and that’s the only time I’ve got before Christmas; or, it might be mildly drizzling on the night; and so forth, and so forth.
Let me spell it out for you: there is a reason why an RSVP exists. ‘Répondez s’il vous plaît’ is simply a polite way of saying please bloody well answer, yes or no, because otherwise I won’t know how many people are coming, and will order too much food and wine. That is what I will put on my invitations from now on: PBWA.
People think that it’s too much bother to RSVP. Has everyone gone mad, and forgotten how much effort it is to host a party? You spend days choosing the date – if it’s a Christmas party, you’ll plump for not early enough that it clashes with office parties, but not late enough that everyone’s gone away to the country.
Then comes the expense. You order (and pay for) the wine; you make lists of what is suitable for people to eat, because you don’t want them drinking too much and being sick on your Axminster, and you don’t want them indecorously shoving hard-to-eat canapés down their throats. If you are a regular party-thrower, you will have got this down to a supreme art. Then you order (and pay for) the food. You may also book in babysitters, or teenage helpers to pass round the quail’s eggs. You may have to think about moving furniture: I shove everything into my study and put the armchair in front of the door. One (very grand) friend even uses a special removal company so that the drawing room is clear.
Once all of this is considered, you send out your invitations to friends and relations. There will also be acquaintances whom you’d like to see more of, or those you think would go well together. You word your invitation carefully – I now put a line at the end reminding guests, on pain of death, not to contact me on the day if they decide they can’t come, because there is nothing more depressing than a stream of texts on the day of the party declaring non-attendance. You put RSVP in bold, and sometimes, as a joke, you put PLEASE RSVP, even though you know that the please is redundant.
‘Répondez s’il vous plaît’ is simply a polite way of saying please bloody well answer
And then you wait. Usually the noes ping in first, cheerfully enough: we’re skiing; or not so cheerfully: we’re divorcing. And then you wait more. A few yeses pop in, which you eagerly add to the spreadsheet. And then: in rolls the tumbleweed. One friend tells me that on sending out an invitation to a WhatsApp group of close friends, not a single person responded. Not one!
Are we really all too lazy? I wonder if perhaps it is a function of our too-busy world: I often stare, bedazzled, at my Google Calendar, glowing with its myriad colours, unable to work out if I am free on 2 February, because I can hardly remember what my name is. Perhaps, too, it is that age-old thing – waiting for a better offer, from grander, more charming or more interesting people. And, I think, many people are still stuck in the Covid lockdown mentality: got a sniffle? Stay at home. Worried about getting a sniffle? Stay at home. Worried about someone else getting a sniffle? Stay at home for ever and ever, tidying your drawers or defrosting your freezer.
The Christmas party season may be (almost) over, but New Year’s Eve is coming up. If you’ve been invited to a party for that dreadful night, it’s more important than ever not only to RSVP, but to jolly well show your face if you’ve said yes; and even if you’ve said no, you can still change your mind, as there’s nothing nicer than someone turning up whom you weren’t expecting. Arrive 15 minutes after the start time, bring a bottle, be cheery and leave as soon after midnight as you can.
And if you haven’t managed to garner the energy to answer yet, now’s the time to do it. Because otherwise, you may find that your hosts decide that if you can’t be bothered, they can’t either.
Comments