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Beginning with the topic of conversation, the common focus of attention
in this episode is'Cookie's Party'. Cookie is an absent third party who at the
time of this conversation had not been seen for some years. Cookie was
however once a central figure in the past joint biographies of all but one of the
participants in this gathering (as is evidenced in her conversational
contributions - line 18 - MB met and married DB after this particular sociable
milieu had disbanded). Some ten plus years prior to the gathering from which
this episode has been drawn, Cookie had held a house party to which the
social group present here had been invited. Such parties were frequent at that
time in these peoples biographies, and marked the time in their histories when
most weekends would be marked by a visit to local pubs, a party of some sort,
or a trip to a local nightclub. Whichever was the case, relatively large amounts
of alcohol would be involved as part of a general hedonistic lifestyle. Ten
years later on, the participants at this gathering are all married and have to
varying degrees 'settled down'. As a conversational topic then, 'Cookie's
Party' provides an important biographical and conversational resources for the
indexing of commonality and solidarity with which participants can jointly
reminisce.
As far as the general handling of 'Cookie's Party' as a conversational
topic is concerned, in the first instance the talk is being framed retrospectively,
that is, as a what I classed earlier as a reminiscence topic type (see Chapter
5). Such topics generally involve drawing on a past events, and importantly,
the identification and invocation of past selves. As opposed to individuated
events, experiences, and selves (Cf. 'Tommy Fields' below), topics
categorised above under reminiscences were those characterised by the
identification of common events, experiences and selves.
In general, the replayed reality of 'Cookie's Party' is invoked and
evaluated consensually. Both the definitions of what happened and the
evaluation of those events are in the first instance shared ones. 'Cookie's
Party' is framed as a 'good party' at which the current conversational ists were
present and all had a good time. In this particular episode salient aspects of
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