Ticking Along on a Lower Echelon?

`I try hard to keep my social life ticking along,’ The Woman I Know said, handing me a glass of something sparkling and very cold and leading me to where her husband was watering pot plants on their rather smart balcony with the rather splendid view. I reflected that she did an admirable job with the ticking, always seemingly involved in exciting social events. Well she needed places to go and people to see for the wearing of her decidedly stylish wardrobe of which I must say I am from time to time, envious. Today she was resplendent in a pale linen ensemble that harboured the merest hint of pink. Her husband drew my attention to his own new linen shirt and said that it had been a birthday present from his wife. I wished him a happy birthday and thought he, too, looked impressive though he expressed doubt about pink even though it toned with the merest hint previously mentioned. He had never worn pink before he told me. `Doesn’t he look superb?’ his wife demanded, `It really is his colour don’t you think?’ She was giving him a kindly and approving glance and so I nodded enthusiastically because I am a coward. The Woman I Know is very social and has been so over years and years although it must be said that when we receive an invitation from her we are invariably the only guests. From time to time I probe a little and say, `What have you two been doing recently?’ and when I do so she clasps her glass in both hands, looks into the middle distance and says mysteriously, `Oh we do lots of lovely, lovely things with lovely, lovely friends…..we have such very special times with our friends,’ and apart from that it is hard to get her to elaborate. Though I have known her over many years, I have met very few of the lovely people of whom she speaks and am left wondering if perhaps they are rather more lovely than myself. Am I somehow of a lower echelon? Or are all these lovely people who have such fun together merely a figment of her imagination? It’s hard to decide.