One of the reasons I adore them so much is that I am a social lightweight.

I used to go to the Pod and party all night, then do breakfast in Manhattan on my way home.

Why, it seems like only yesterday I was rearing to go at 1am, all glitter and black eyeliner and fags - what has happened to me of late?

"Of late" is, on honest analysis, well over 10 years. Does the Pod even exist any more? And Manhattan? Because occasionally, when I am in Dublin, child-free and footloose, I intend to head down there for a good old boogie-woogie.

However, I appear to have become constitutionally incapable of staying awake past 11 - unless I am entertaining at home and friends refuse to leave. (My husband once came and dragged me out of bed at 3am, made me get redressed and come back downstairs. We don't entertain as much these days. ) Which is why I like office parties - everyone is plastered by mid-afternoon and the main entertainment - the karaoke and disco dancing - is well within my fun-curfew time of 10pm. If I push myself, I can usually hang around long enough to witness other people snogging/crying/fighting - before getting to bed for my requsite eight hours well within 'A Prayer at Bedtime'. I don't even know if that is still on because I am always asleep well before it.

The problem is timing for me. The part of the evening I enjoy is the throwing myself around the dancefloor/karaoke bit but it seems that other people need to be really drunk to do that so it doesn't happen until the early hours - by which time I have lost interest.

Recently I have been persuaded into pubs which purport to have dancing. I have troughed through bar bites, watched everyone get hammered then been unable to get anyone up to the dancefloor which basically consists of a rather sad looking DJ rifling through a bunch of bad CDs. You would think 'weddings' wouldn't you? But even they adhere to the eat stodge, talk crap for five hours and then have fun rule. So for me, the office party, the opportunity for the mid-afternoon Hustle/Ooops Upside Your Head combo, is irresistable.

Except I don't belong to that office world any more. I am a lowly "freelance". Cut loose from the world of annual conference-hotel lunches, divorced from the corporate world that for so long provided me with the opportunity to abandon all attempts at propriety as I shimmied inapproriately with a selection of middle-aged advertising executives to Kool and The Gang's 'Celebrate Good Times (C'mon! )'. Halcyon days. It is a horrible feeling, being thoroughly alone in the party-stakes for Christmas. Oh yes - there is calling to the neighbours for drinks and nibbles, but it's not the same as getting glitter stuck in your bra - the annual opportunity to be a middle-aged "hen" just one more time.

My good friend Deirdre runs our local gym and invited me on her staff night out last year. It was great. I dressed slutty and wore a party hat. . . but I never made it to the disco.