Hampered by a friend

I have a friend who I love dearly but who, it has to be faced, is a bit of a flake. I've known him ever since I was a teenager – so for an embarrassingly long time – and in all those years, he's committed one social gaffe after another. This social ineptitude doesn't stem from any lack of intelligence – he's one of the brightest people I know – but he just can't seem to 'read' people and therefore has little sense of what is or isn't socially appropriate.

It was only a few months ago that he turned up for a Sunday lunch (for which I had planned, shopped and cooked to feed precisely ten people) with his two teenage sons. All well and good, apart from the fact that he'd neglected to tell me he was bringing them along. As a result, we didn't have enough chairs to seat everyone at the table and, worse yet, there wasn't quite enough food to go round.

In the run up to the post-wedding party, Mark and I had sent out 'save the date' emails in early March, to ensure that the people we most wanted to celebrate with would be free on the evening in question. Then, in late June, just before we sent the invitations out, we emailed everyone to get their correct addresses. Then the invitations went out in July. I even had a long conversation with this old friend of mine (let's call him Bob to preserve the blushes of the not-so-innocent) in mid-July where he explained that he'd nearly forgotten to tell his wife about the invitation, but had remembered in the nick of time.

You could say that we'd given people adequate warning. So I was hugely pissed off when, eight days before the party, I got an email from Bob to say that he hoped I wouldn't mind that his wife couldn't make it. Why? Because she'd got the dates wrong and was going to spend the weekend with a friend of hers in Stockholm instead. So, not a happy bunny.

Injury was then added to insult when, to make amends, a Fortnum's hamper arrived. It was a wedding present from Bob and his wife. Now I love a Fortnum's hamper as much as the next girl (in fact probably more than the next girl), but this one was stuffed full of tea-time stuff like biscuits and jams. Absolutely delicious. But possibly not the best thing to give a dieting bride...