I know party season is upon us, for a friend who edits British Vogue sent me the December issue and I slipped into it as easily as if it were Ralph Lauren's pool at Round Hill in Montego Bay. Shhhh, in I went, all naked and defenceless and hopeful that I could still lust after shiny objects and mindless fun with pretty people. The December issue of British Vogue is art. This year's cover is a kind of blunted gold, a matte black silhouette of a woman's head, the only image. And on the back, a wild bronzed Dior ad -- it is a sensuous thing, slipping though my fingers like good silk or cashmere. Last year's December issue was just as pretty: silver foil, letters like snow. It still lies in my sitting room, and even the most committed forest activist has trouble keeping her hands off it. Both are guidebooks to having fun.

Drink, and dance and laugh and lie,

Love the reeling midnight through.

For tomorrow we shall die!

But alas we never do.

-- Dorothy Parker

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I know party season is upon us, for a friend who edits British Vogue sent me the December issue and I slipped into it as easily as if it were Ralph Lauren's pool at Round Hill in Montego Bay. Shhhh, in I went, all naked and defenceless and hopeful that I could still lust after shiny objects and mindless fun with pretty people. The December issue of British Vogue is art. This year's cover is a kind of blunted gold, a matte black silhouette of a woman's head, the only image. And on the back, a wild bronzed Dior ad -- it is a sensuous thing, slipping though my fingers like good silk or cashmere. Last year's December issue was just as pretty: silver foil, letters like snow. It still lies in my sitting room, and even the most committed forest activist has trouble keeping her hands off it. Both are guidebooks to having fun.

I loathe fun. I hate parties. I'm so glad I'll miss them all this year.

The last party I remember attending with any interest was that of a new friend, who just had a baby with a pop star. I went in my pajamas, because I was tired, though I had on Trickers' velvet slippers and a Comme des Garcons dressing gown. Still: no makeup, glasses, hair in ponytail. George Harrison was sitting on the couch, a member of the Eagles was there, and Billy Idol trashed the kitchen and threw wrought iron dining room chairs through the window glass into the garden. The host spent the evening upstairs in his bedroom, refusing to come down, sulking and frightened at his pulling power. It was my last party, so, fittingly, I was chased around the dinner table by a gay VJ for MTV Europe. She was enormous and beautiful with a very, very strong personality and I barely escaped.

I grew up in Montreal, a party town if there ever was one, and my parents and their friends practised entertaining with immense enthusiasm. Let me tell you no one knows more about having fun than an Anglo in Montreal, and I bet that's still true. I am, I think, fifth, maybe sixth generation party girl, Canadian party girl, something anyone out of the country would find a hilarious contradiction. I learned how to hiss "climber" by the age of 14, and wise before my years, always, always had a full schedule. I even trailed after a friend on the deb circuit, determinedly gathering admirers around me, and was told by a very pretty one in the McGill student centre that I was practising the thousand year old art of camp flirting. Yes I was, and I got 51% in first year McGill to prove it.

Over now. Ten years of determined marching through every nightclub in North America and Europe (twice) utterly finished me. I can't pass a crowded nightclub without the hiss and keen of bad drugs and silly chatter filling my head. Can't even drink any more - - it makes me sick -- don't really like to smoke and proper party girls must do both. I went through a period of accepting invitations but not showing up. Now that's not behaviour to ensure popularity. I think my genes finally said, look, we're exhausted, enough already, we'd like a lifetime of quiet and good sense.

Thus, they give the time that Nature meant

For peaceful sleep and meditative snores

To ceaseless din and mindless merriment

And waste of shoes and floors

-- Lewis Carroll

Nicole Kidman reclines, a voluptuary in poinsettia red ruffles, on the cover of the December American Vogue, a bundle of fun tempting us. I'll bet you Kidman doesn't go to parties either, and I know for a fact that the editors of British Vogue avoid them. The truly glamorous don't go out anymore, which is, of course, why I don't. It's not that we hate people. I have dozens, possibly hundreds of friends, and live in abject adoration of each and every one of them, even though at least 10% are quarrelling with me at any one time (I say this to show I'm not a doormat). I love all my old boyfriends, and even like my former husband's new wife, though that is tinged with fascination: male? female? hermaphrodite? transvestite?

It's different now, I think. People are not bound to families and class or rebellion against such. There's no new way to "place" us yet, except for by our relative success and money. It makes fun too competitive, too much about shiny objects and cash, big trips and big houses, Ivy league schools for the kids, and bonuses.

Still, I am for those who believe in loose delights. If you can still chase the glowing hours with flying feet, I envy you madly, and am with you in spirit. Let joy be unconfined.