One Upmanship.

I have never been to a cheese and wine party for which I am glad because it strikes me as a very bad combination.

Sherry parties were de rigeuer when I was at University. Excruciating when given by a lecturer I couldn't stand and who hadn't bothered getting to know his students by name.

Oh la la kitty , wasn't it bright green?
I think life was simpler annsixty, and being young, we were having fun.
Chicken/scampi in a basket, Bernie Inn steak and coffee liqueurs, Brandy and Babycham......

J52, I was much more sophisticated than that - I drank creme de menthe frappe!

A friend was pretty high up in the retail grocery business. Regional Director responsible for xxx number of stores in the County etc. When out socially and asked what he did for a living he said he sold baked beans. To give any idea of his position meant being told how he could run the stores better, deal with customers better, and why wasn't ''' such and such'' on the shelves, and could he find a job for wee Jimmy.

My father used to come home from the pub with a 2 bottles of Babycham, one for mother and one for me.... I was about 16.

Another horror was the Sherry Party. We were invited to one before a buffet lunch (some fundraising do or other) Drinking schooners of sherry on an empty stomach meant that everyone was sh*t faced and the poor waitresses had to make copious amounts of coffee to sober everyone up!

What lovely memories of times long gone (in my case anyway) thank you all. We really did enjoy life then, have we all turned into snobs? Because we seemed enjoy every minute.

I liked Creme de Menthe! x

Of course! Matteus not Anjou
Really thought we were the bee's knees when fondue sets came out. My sister recently gave me hers so I should dust it off, loved the cheese version.
Do any GNs remember when drinking liqueurs were fashionable, not just after a meal? I remember drinking a Tia Maria followed by a Cointreau then a Cherry Brandy and falling over in a large puddle in the car park. My parents never drank (a bottle of sherry for 'visitors' lasted years) and I thought I'd been as quiet as a mouse creeping up the stairs but the game was up when I spent the next few hours being very ill. Mum was incandescent, mainly because a) I'd been in a PUB and b) even worse, she was mortified in case anyone they knew had seen me.......

The height of sophistication, that! Bought some for my mum and dad, not knowing what it was. I'd don't think I [or they] had ever tasted wine. Bet they poured it down the sink [Dad;'I'll stick to me Ansells bitter I think, duck']....

Matteus Rosé for my mil!

Bull's Blood, Anjou Rosé (kept the bottles for candles) and Blue Nun were pretty much the only wines too? I'd forgotten that! And the lack of non-alcoholic drinks.....
With cheese and pineapple or silverskin onions on cocktail sticks stuck into a foil covered half grapefruit, sausages on sticks ditto (hence 'hedgehogs'), vol au vents, and twiglets or peanuts, the height of sophistication
Memories galore

My late uncle was a bank manager in the days when they held the local purse. He and my aunt hosted a dinner for some important clients. One of the wives had prepared herself with rather a lot of Dutch courage and collapsed into her soup! X

When I was at Uni. My mother had a Christmas morning drinks do. A rather snobbish woman looking me up and down, at my somewhat hippy attire asked where I lived. She was very surprised when I said, ' here, it's my home!' x

I used to have to attend a lot of dinner parties with DH, some were fun but a lot were a real pain. On one occasion a lady said to me that she was surprised to find that a city in the north of England had a restaurant that served decent food. "hello" not living in caves up here.

The last cheese and wine party I went to was a college fundraiser about 50 years ago.
I was going out with one of the maths lecturers at the time. He introduced me to a pretty blonde girl. 'Jenny, this is Rose, a friend of mine. Rose, this is Jenny, my fiancee'.
I drank far too much Hungarian Bull's Blood, ate too much cheese and was violently sick on the way home.

I think the trick will be to coerce some friends to help kitty, and badger anyone including local wine merchants and supermarkets for donations if you can. Sainsburys recently gave us five platters of nibbles as a donation so worth asking.
Good luck! I actually enjoyed doing it

Oh good for you kitty and I hope they appreciate you.

would love to have seen her face when she finally twigged!
The 'gem' got us in to virtually every Manor House and even a staely home within a 10 mile radius, and she only stopped doing it when she was 90, an amazing lady with more gumption than I'll ever have.

One of our neighbours was a Consultant at the local STD clinic. At a party, one very loud ladyeeee with a flamboyant hat kept saying loudly ' but who are you- I'm sure I've met you before' - and we all were in stiches!

We used to go to the RNLI Cheese & Wine party, the highlight of village life, because the amazing organiser used to wangle her way in to the big houses and persuade the owners to let us use their house for the evening.
The committee would get the food organised ('bring a plate' from anyone who we could bribe/coerce/badger!)
Most, including us, loved seeing how the other half lived and on more than one occasion we had to clean and polish a manorial room before setting it up.
They used to raise a lot of money simply because the organiser was a gem.
Great fun.....

This aimed at keeping the volunteers on board Ann until we take over the village library and give them something to do, so it's free!

The only ones I went to kittyin the dim and distant past were fundraisers and they were very good at raising funds. We were all very law abiding and payment for wine was done with some weird system involving raffle tickets, I can't remember details. I suppose in today's affluent society you would be asking £10's for attending with as much wine as you wanted, but these were for school, cubs and guides etc so we charged a nominal amount for food and a glass of wine and anyone who wanted more bought it. Hence the raffle tickets so as not to infringe licensing laws. Good luck with it, it will be fun.

I love fondues, both the cheese and meat variety. Haven't had one for years.
Might do one next weak. (Cheese)