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From: aspendex Category: Art Date: 19 September 2006 Time: 05:16 AM Review: Two hour journey became four through not taking the road more travelled by. The invites looked as though they been produced by a PR company, telling you about all the entertainment precisely, and with a separate sheet of directions that had a little map that had been done by a graphic designer, and well researched hotel prices. The house-warming was from12-7pm. And by the time we arrived it was tepid. Food eaten and cleared away so not even any scraps for hungry dogs, pudding and coffee being served by fresh- faced gap year students, not sullen migrants. The Brazilian band was on its last legs. The guests, told to war hot colours had responded drably. The English quite/very well off 40 something classes, sort of Kensington and Chelsea dabblers in fashion or art, with their own property or production companies, wealth well spent, a trifle noveau. Everyone was taut and trim as they could be, the men tanned with coiffeured hair, all identical in neat belted trousers and slightly loud shirts open a button or too lower than the yobs. The women, dieted, ugly, and with layered blonde/light brown hair wore summer dresses, nothing too over the top, a bit floaty, sometimes boobpoppingly skimpy, and patterned, wedge heels with strappiness. They were a group of utter homogeneity. 99% white of course and with only the odd misfit possessing dark hair. All refusing to grow old. The house had its old stone stuffed with all mod cons: agas with flat tv screens built in etc, the oak in the bathroom alone probably cost enough to decorate an entire council flat. Moodily away from the round swimmingpool, the japanese fish ponds, the tennis court under construction, the pool of refelction, the round pond with the fountain surrounded by a sea of fringed white flowers , out of the way behind the salsa playing band, beyond the new wall, in amongst shady treee, were three cascading medieval fish ponds left for the moment unravished by improvement, and beautiful and deep. At 6.30 even the bar began to be packed up. You see it wasn't a party, such as you and I know, where people have fun, and go home when they're bored or thrown out. No. It was more like a business meeting, the guests come, make sure they stay long enough to show they've been to the right sort of thing, and leave as soon as they can. Think of it as transaction achieved, another one notched up in the grim spectacle of appearances for the successful high achievers, the ceaseless ones, the skinny and hard working days of leisure pre-Death.