First prize

Only driving across town to last night's party did another danger of bad-taste dressing occur to me - I might have an accident on the way. My mother's recommended clean knickers and hanky wouldn't get me out of this one. Imagine the humiliation of being unloaded from the ambulance into a busy accident and emergency ward looking like an ageing Westie. On the hand, the need to explain that I don't always dress this way might have catapulted me back to consciousness.

First prize (a macrame objet of uncertain use and nil decorative value) was taken by an astoundingly bad taste outfit (those of a sensitive nature should avert their eyes at this point) - a Dead Diana. She wore a ice-blue, off-the-shoulder dress, blond bob and coronet, and a nasty head wound. Her partner had explored the gore theme to even greater visual effect - he had the remains of a brutal collision with a seagull splattered across his white tee-shirt.

Top marks to the Birthday Girl herself, whose outsize lapel button bore a portrait of Sarah Palin and the caption, "Thank god for a beauty queen who doesn't want world peace."

I can't go, though, without bequeathing you these two stunning demonstrations of the best that macrame has to offer our ideas of dress and personal adornment (and again, those of a sensitive nature etc).