Looking at all those interior decorating magazines with their huge tables and tasteful placesettings, one imagines, rather wistfully, that other people do nothing but entertain. But now it turns out that all that low-level lighting and all those linen napkins are really intended to seduce one's own loved ones. From now, on we'll just be feeding the family.

A new survey published in Britain shows a sharp decline in the time spent entertaining friends or dining at other people's homes. Nowadays people prefer to meet their friends in restaurants . . .

preferably restaurants in other countries, if the queues at Dublin airport are anything to go by.

In Ireland, dinner parties were always a minority sport, like rugby.

Very, very like rugby actually, back when rugby was a minority sport. I don't think Irish society was ever going to take to the dinner party. We don't like formality, we don't like strain and we are deeply paranoid.

These are not the qualities found in the type of person who once gave glittering dinner parties.

It would be nice to be able to say that I'll miss the dinner party, but frankly it's so long since I've been at one that I can't really remember what they were like. A lot of hard work, I seem to remember. I was always a bit of a white-knuckle hostess myself. I never had enough tea towels. Or serving dishes. I'm just not that type of girl . . . although I was reared to be.

This is not to say that no one now puts a foot over the threshold of our home. On the contrary, it seems that the weekends bring a long stream of people, but they seem to be drinking coffee and eating spaghetti . . .

frequently at the same time.

Even looking round at my betterorganised friends, I can't see a single dinner party on the horizon, although people do seem to have lunches from time to time. In fact, lunch may soon be the new dinner.

The dinner party, like smoking, seems to have moved outside. It has become the barbecue, which is so much easier. Also . . . although I have no complaints in this regard myself . . .

men tend to take charge of barbecues in some quite atavistic way, which does spread the work load a good bit.

Obviously the dinner party has vanished now that women have returned to the workplace. This survey shows that the sharpest decline in entertaining has occurred amongst the professional classes, where it has almost halved. The higher the level of education, as it were, the further from the fondue. (Bloody fondue . . . you never got enough to eat. ) The middle-class dinner party, which was given between the time of domestic servants and before takeaway food, was a miracle of intelligence, social confidence and bloody hard work. All that brain power poured into Waterford glass and crystallised sugar . . . it does make you think. Actually, it makes you think, 'Thank God I don't have to do it, I'll just throw a big bash at Communion time instead and get it catered.'

So the dinner party has died because the hostesses are too tired.

But I think it has also died because the guests are too tired as well. Or away. Organising a dinner party now would require a good long look at a couple of flight schedules. And, by the time a couple has done the shopping, the washing and the child-minding that has piled up during the previous week, a barbecue is all they're fit for . . .

you can roll up to a barbecue in your T-shirt. You can bring your kids if you have to.

The dinner party has also become what used to be called kitchen supper.

Kitchen supper was different from a dinner party in that (a) it was eaten in the kitchen, (b) it had no more than three courses, and (c) you only got one set of cutlery. In other words, kitchen supper is the way we eat now. But now it looks like the kitchen supper is under threat as well, which would be a shame.

Oh yes, the houses are much plusher, but fewer people get to see them from the inside.