Jayne Dowle: Party time should be right up your street

I can remember our street parties for the Silver Jubilee and the Charles and Diana nuptials like they were yesterday. And at the Queen’s Golden Jubilee, I was on the Mall, waving my flag at Cliff Richard in the biggest street party of them all.

At first my dear friend, neighbour and uber-organiser, but certainly no staunch Royalist, sniffed at the idea. Then the other night, she started reminiscing about the street parties she enjoyed on her childhood council estate. Two bottles of wine later, and it looks like we’re having one.

When I got home and excitedly told my husband, he did his usual cynical/doubtful bloke thing and pointed out that we live on a main road, and a bus-route at that. It was going to cost money to divert the traffic.

I did explain that we had actually noticed the buses trundling by from time to time. That’s why we’re having it in a back garden, precise back garden to be confirmed. Then he started on about rain and long-term weather forecasts. I ignored him and started googling “bunting” and “flags”.

Men, it seems to me, take much longer to talk round to the idea of communal jollies. Where women see the chance to give the kids a memory to last the rest of their lives, they see danger in every sausage on a stick. Where women channel their inner grandmothers, and start planning what they are going to put in the sandwiches, they fret about the prospect of putting up a gazebo in a Force 10 gale. Where women relish the challenge of sitting down and making endless to-do lists, they anticipate Christmas, but on a nightmarish scale hitherto un-imagined.

But one man who really should get behind the idea is David Cameron. What better way to a) cheer everyone up in a year that has so far been full of gloom, b) sell the Royals in a positive light and c) most importantly of all, push his beleaguered Big Society? After all, what is a street party but the Big Society in grand action? Everyone working together for a common aim, for free, neighbours helping each other out, community spirit and all that.

A street party on every street. Fantastic. Launch a campaign right now.

Well, sorry to rain on everyone’s fancy-dress parade, but this is where the trouble would start. We’re not the country we were in 1981, and nowhere near the one we were in 1977.

Indeed, many of us don’t even live on a street, or anything that might approximate one. Are you going to put up a note in the lobby of your city-centre apartment block and ask if anybody fancies having a what? A balcony party?

Do you even know your neighbours to say hello to, never mind like them to the extent that you could contemplate singing karaoke with them for three hours while wearing a paper hat?

Whereever we live, many of us don’t even know if our neighbours prefer sugar in their tea, let alone whether they would be prepared to bake and ice a dozen buns. And if you do know your neighbours, you can never assume that they might want to know you on any level more intimate than a cursory nod of a morning.

So many of us live closed lives these days. We get home from work, park the car, close the curtains and switch on the television, safe in our own little worlds. The thought of actually socialising with the people across the road could be enough to bring some of us out in mild agoraphobia. Your neighbours may be aghast at the very idea of celebrating a Royal event. We can’t assume that everyone has homogenous cultural and political views.

The Sex Pistols hadn’t made much of an impression on Barnsley in 1977, but by 1981, I recall a certain degree of cynicism about acknowledging the marriage of two extremely rich individuals whilst millions of people faced a future without a job. I reckon that if David Cameron takes up my idea, that’s going to be the tricky one to get over.

The idealism of previous generations has been lost along the way.

To think that the nation erupted into mass celebration in 1953, just eight years after the end of the Second World War. When I look at the faded old photo of my mum and most of her village huddled around a makeshift table in the working men’s club – their Coronation street party was rained off – I can’t imagine smiles as wide and hopeful in 2011.

So, should you be brave enough to raise the idea of a Royal wedding street party in your neighbourhood, dare you face the health’n’safety bores, the indifference and the “sorry, but we’re going to France for the long weekend”?

Well, you won’t know unless you try. And if we can’t pull together for this, what hope have we got of pulling together for anything else?