The Plus One's

New Years Eve and Virgin finally deliver my guaranteed delivery before Christmas wines. Their second promise had been to get it to me before New Year. I’m a little disappointed that they have, as it takes the sting out of the complaint that I was planning to send to them.

The wine arrives just in time for tonight's teenagers rave up at our house. I decide to leave the wine at work until after New Year!

During lunch we try and do our usual Thursday pub lunch, particularly as all the sandwich vans have deserted us but the kitchen staff at the pub have deserted us as well; at least they have rolls and liquid sustenance. Will be glad when things get back to normal.

Work at least show a bit of New Year spirit and let us leave at 4pm.

L and I head out early to celebrate the end of 2009. L walks the dogs to the Rodney pub, whilst I park up at out next destination the Hemlock Stone and then walk up to meet her. We have a few pints in there, both disappointing, Tiger & Directors, which reminds us why we don’t drink there anymore.

Then we head down the road to the Hemlock, shove the dogs in the car and wait for my parents. Here the Directors is better and the wine good too. The meal we have is Thai and impressive also. The pub is good too, practically jumping in here and it would have been an ok place to spend the whole evening. They have a live band on and they’re not bad at all. The place is rammed by the time we leave around 10.30.



We leave so that we can walk the dogs home where we need to check on the merriment that is occurring there. Doggo seems to know something is cracking off on his patch and he sets a furious pace home. He’s right; something is cracking off and the party is in full swing. We have put a load of stuff in the spare room for safe keeping, so that it doesn’t get broken. Unfortunately the party seems to have already over-spilled into there.

Apparently we have around 37 teenage revellers, where as usually Son invites around 15. Apparently everyone has been encouraged to bring a friend. When one girl embraces me and slurs that she’s a ‘plus one’, I’m not at first sure what she means but if she wants to hug me, then that’s fine. Turns out she means she’s one of the friend of’s. She can come again. Come midnight there’s a lot of embracing going on, even of ‘us parents’ and as a lot of it’s by teenage girls, they can all come again.

The amount of alcohol being consumed makes L and I look at our evening consumption in a better light. Then at 1pm, with things still in full swing we hit the sack, only for one of the girls to follows us into the bedroom! I wonder if she’s looking for somewhere to kip, I’m happy for her to curl up at the bottom of the bed if she wants but L might not approve. She says she’s just looking for someone and soon departs. We sleep but are awoken around 4am when it is clear the party is still going on. It goes quiet eventually but only until the cooking of breakfast commences at around 8am.