The Birthday Shopping List

I leave for work with Son’s birthday shopping list in my hand:- 16 cans Strongbow, 24 cans Stella, 16 cans Carling, 3 large bottles WKD, 1 bottle of Bacardi, 3 of Vodka and 2 bottles of coke. So I assume they’re getting bladdered tonight. I shall be giving him a similar, slightly more refined list for my next milestone birthday.

That lot’s probably just for the punch. Well actually, no it isn’t. L says she’s been told stories about the punch at 18th birthday parties and the advice is to keep a parent ‘in the background’ to keep tasting the punch to see how the spiking is coming along. She reckons she could handle that job. The other option is to not have punch at all and perhaps that’s the best plan. We don’t want anyone drunk in charge of an xbox or passing out before the stripper arrives.

Checking through Son’s list, I can’t actually afford, let alone carry that much alcohol, so in the end we agree on about half that quantity. I’m sure his guests will top it up.

We get home from work, and start cooking a load of pizza’s and garlic bread for his guests. I’m sure he’d do the same for us. Then, naturally we’ve been evicted from the house again, so we head off to the pub. L’s decided that returning sober might not be a good idea. Although there are some of the girl species expected at the party, so I just hope we don’t give a bad impression to any future ‘significant others’.

As we walk to the pub we pass the party entourage led by Son or, as he’ll probably now be known hereafter ‘Big D’. According to his new t-shirt, ‘Big D Approves’. The in joke, we are told later, is that ‘Big D’ doesn’t tend to approve of much. Ha, and we thought it was just us.

Daughter has been cordially invited to join the party, which she enthusiastically does and she’s also entitled to invite a friend, which she enthusiastically doesn’t. I guess if there are email addresses and mobile phones numbers of boys to hoover up, it’s best to keep them to yourself.

We set her the challenge of getting a photo of someone attempting MD’s weave poles that are still setup in the garden. Disappointingly this doesn’t prove to be much of a challenge and we’ve barely taken our seats in the Plough before we get a text saying she’s achieved this feat already and even got someone to go over the hurdles.

I must mention at this point that we’ve recently started having problems with the catch on the bathroom door, which appears to be broken and keeps sticking. No one has been trapped in yet, well not for long anyhow. Luckily they seem to be on top of this problem and have adopted the policy of not going to the toilet without a mobile phone, so that you can text for assistance if necessary.

We head home around 11.30, hoping that the party will still be going so that we can partake a little in the merriment ourselves. The dogs get home and rather than savage all the interlopers who are on their territory, they disappear into the garden to play with them. So we do a bit of circulating ourselves, finding them a pleasant bunch, with better taste in music than we expected, even if one of them does drink Stella and Coke mixed.

Doggo is still in garden, playing football with the guests at 2am, having clearly forgotten that he’s got an event tomorrow and has to be up early. So have I to be fair, so we make our apologies and head off to bed, dragging the disappointed dogs with us but not before, having clearly worked up an appetite, they help themselves to the kebab that has been abandoned on the coffee table. Doggo seems to be taking our veggie week seriously and takes the pitta bread, leaving a delighted MD to mop up the meat.

The party meanwhile goes on. I awake at 4am and it’s still going on. Daughter’s voice and I’m not implying anything here... always seems to be the most prominent. I awake again briefly at 5am, as they break for crunchy nut cornflakes before continuing...