By Peter Grenville

Last updated at 17:11, Friday, 21 September 2012

YOU know those annoying people at parties? In the loud shirts, who knock back the wine like it’s free, and then get all smart-Alec-y and think they know everything? I hate them.

Peter Grenville

If, like me, times are a little hard, and you can only afford to go out occasionally, you really want to have an enjoyable evening, relaxing with friends, for a nice chat and a few laughs. Or, you may be going to dinner at someone’s house: old friends from school, perhaps. Or work colleagues. Family, even.

What you really don’t need at an occasion that’s meant to be fun is some boorish goon, who starts out relatively normally, but gets progressively louder as the evening goes on. You know the type – quaffing your expensive Pinot Grigio like it’s a bottle of value cider, and gradually getting louder and louder, whilst their anecdotes get progressively longer, their tales of brilliant japes steadily sound less and less believable.

And then they seem to feel the need to try to take control of the conversation, in some ill-advised attempt to keep the evening jolly, which it would have been, had they not done precisely that.

They’ll try to out-do everyone else’s stories, by dredging up an even better story from their own murky past, and even though they have some inkling that they might actually not be the life and soul of the party, but in fact it’s imminent death and joy-free harbinger of dullness, they still struggle on.

Amusingly slurred words turn into incoherent sentences, as they gradually go from looking reasonably smart and intelligent, to a scruffy sad-act who everyone would pity, were they not too traumatised by their endless blathering.

By the end of the evening, you’re politely telling them how great it was to see them, that you should all really do it again soon, when what you’re actually hoping is that they’ll just go, so you can just go to bed hoping it was all just some horrible dream.

The next time you see them, they’ll appear once more to be a nice, gently amusing, normal human being, and you’ll start thinking... did you overreact? You did have a few drinks yourself...

Before you know it, you’ve invited them round again, and condemned yourself to yet another evening of miserable, existence, whilst smiling, listening politely, and wondering why you spent £12.99 on that wine.

I have something to tell you: That person – it’s me. I realised it recently, when a moment of clarity struck me at a lovely meal out, that I was busy spoiling by being an insufferable oaf.

The bad news is... it’s probably you, too...

Have a, soberingly, good weekend.

First published at 16:33, Friday, 21 September 2012
Published by http://www.nwemail.co.uk