Saturday 22nd December 2001 – A tale of two parties
Two parties have been and gone: Riversoft’s Christmas party and your 3rd birthday party. Riversoft’s party was ok, your birthday party was great!
I went to Riversoft’s party with Caren as I didn’t want to take R. with me, given the events of last year. I didn’t want to drink and have a mad hangover the day after, or make a fool of myself again. So I smoked instead. Caren is a smoker so we were set. I know Caren from university as well, and we don’t see each other often but she’s a good laugh and I like her. Anyway, we went, got there at 10 (the party was on the 8th of December, I didn’t have time to finish writing on the 11th), and the fire brigade had just arrived.
We got into the reception and there were 5 firemen standing there. One of the girls from work said that the alarm had gone off, and we could just go in. Apparently that was the 3rd time the alarm had gone off and that the fire brigade had been. The firemen were later seen on the dance floor, having a quick dance. Everyone was dressed up to the nines, all the guys were wearing suits and I didn’t even recognise some of them. Mind you, I was stoned. I never smoke and go to a party, and I don’t think I will again. I was so paranoid, and I forgot how to dance! I was smoking when Phil T. came up to say hello, I was lost for words, so I ended up offering him a tab on my spliff. He’s a kind guy, so he accepted. After that Phil became our friend and spent some time with us, also talking to Caren, who was the only single woman available. He wasn’t hitting on her or anything, but she really was the only single girl at the party!
As I didn’t want to abandon Caren, I didn’t get a chance to talk to a lot of people. There was a tribute band playing with some massive afro wigs on, but the music was all 70’s stuff and I just couldn’t get into it. Everyone seemed to be having a great time – but I guess you needed to be drunk. At one point I struck up a conversation with some bloke I had never seen before, and finally I asked who he was, and he said he was Phill T. We spend 5 minutes doing panto: oh no you’re not, oh yes I am… Then he seemed to be getting upset, then he asked me: “ok, if I’m not Phill, then who is?” I could the real Phill at the bar from where I was (at the top of the stairs) and was about to point him out, when paranoia struck. What if he’s here to kill Phill? So I pointed at someone else and asked Caren to come with me, away from the nutter.
The reason for the paranoia was the spliff, but also the fact that a couple of weeks ago, a gang broke into Riversoft headquarters (i.e. our office), via the skyline, and stole our ATM cards (worth 100,000 pounds each), and more crucially, our servers, with all our code and some backups too. So, once all the damage assessment had been done, some people had lost 3 weeks work. And some people had worked double time to meet the deadline, so it was some serious work lost. We’re not supposed to keep work on our hard disks but some people did, including me. This meant the Java team only lost a couple of day’s work and I was a bit of a hero, along with a couple of other people. Sometimes it does pay to break the rules!
Anyway, Caren was bored, I was paranoid, most people had left the party pretty early (around 1 pm) and we left. I got home at 2:30 and had no hangover or regrets the day after! Pretty good I thought, compared to last year’s disaster.
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Now we come to your party. I took Thursday (the 13th) and Friday off work to prepare it with R. Your grandma Linda and uncle Warren (who hadn’t seen you since you were 4 months old) came down specially for a week. R. and I spent Thursday and Friday running around, buying food, organising everything. Hardly any of your friends’ parents had phoned to RSVP by Wednesday, so we thought there were only going to be about 4 children and god knows how many adults in there. By Friday more people phoned to say they were coming. Emma and Fernando said they were coming from Birmingham too. Val and Feddy, Joe and Melissa said they were coming too. Matt P., from work, he has a 4 year daughter, said he was coming. Even Tracey and Ben said they were coming (Tracey, your first ever childminder, remember? and Ben, her 7 year old son, whom you like a lot).
On Saturday morning we were running around. I was doing the pasta, Linda made the fairy cakes, R. made the sandwiches and a salad. Warren went to the shop and got some milk (Warren ended up being the star of the party!). At 12 we rushed to the First Steps playgroup porta cabin (on Bride Street), praying there would be nobody there yet. Well, there was… Josh, his pregnant mum, his dad (Ruddy), his little baby sister (or brother). So we went in. I just parked the car in front of the gate, completely blocking it. Then Matt P. from work showed up, minus his daughter, saying that his daughter’s mum had just disappeared with his daughter (they had an argument), but that he would stay for a while, if that was ok. Well, fine, the more the merrier. I went to move the car and bang! As I was reversing I managed to scratch Ruddy’s Golf GTI (the car I want to have!). It had a nice white scratch across the driver’s front door and the front wing. Excellent. I felt like doing a runner, but at the point Ruddy came out (I think he heard the bang). So that was a good start. I felt awful, shaking and everything. We assessed the damage, I said I’d get my insurance company to pay for it, he obviously wasn’t happy (but he’s a nice guy), and we went back in to break the news. His wife then proceeded to tell us (she is really nice too!) how they had both their cars written off in the summer, by a driver who just smashed onto them while they were in the driveway! Not only that, but the driver was uninsured. So, compared to that I was small potatoes, and the car isn’t even his, it belonged to work. Still, I felt bad and embarrassed and opened a bottle of Smirnoff ice, at 12:15, on an empty stomach.
I went outside to call Matt P. (he said he was going to move his car, before I went to move mine, and hadn’t come back yet) when Izzie (your best friend), her mum, dad and brother arrived. Izzies’s mum asked if I minded if she left her there while they went shopping, and apologised for not having rang to say they were coming… I said yes, fine (I was on the phone). She went in with Izzie while her husband and son waited outside. I started having a chat with her husband, told him I had just had a little car accident, he told me how him and his wife will probably separate, and they were not going shopping, they were going to finalise things, she came back out again and off they went! This was turning out to be a strange day. I called your grandma Linda who hadn’t showed up yet with Warren (they stayed in the house, as the car was full), and she said some girl had called and asked for them to wait as they were about to arrive to go to the party. I thought it was probably Emma and Fernando.
The party was in full swing by now, at 1pm. You were wearing your pirate outfit, not knowing what to do with so many presents. You were ripping the paper off, taking a quick look, and moving on to the next! Marlene and Emma were there, Zoe and her parents (Aurelia and John, whom we keep meaning to go out with – as they are a couple we hit it off with) were there too. My mum brought June and her grandson too. June is really nice. One day we went out together, June, mum, you and I. June and I were talking for ages.
Anyway, I was outside having a fag break with Matt P. and Izzie’s dad (and brother) who had come back minus the mother. He said that they had sorted out their stuff and came back to the party. He didn’t look very happy and didn’t talk to anybody at the party, poor guy. They sneaked off too later on, without saying goodbye, but I saw it out of the corner of my eye. Fair play to him though, he braved the situation for quite a long time, I wish I could have done something to make him feel happier, but all I managed to do was get him and Matt P. a glass of wine… Matt P., obviously, was not having a good day either, but he too stayed for the duration. Some people are brave like that, I guess. So I was having a cigarette with them (I’m smoking like a chimney again, giving up tomorrow again, this time on a joint effort with R.) when I saw Linda, and Warren, and Emma (plodding along: she’s 8 months pregnant) and Fernando. I just ran off and gave Emma a big hug (ran past Fernando, but he understood). I can’t believe she’s having a baby!!! With Fernando! I could write a book on him… I’ll write a ‘chapter’ one day.
The party wasn’t very organised at all. The only thing I managed to swing was some face painting done by Warren to do it (he’s a really good painter). At some point I got the pasta out, managed to microwave it with Tracy’s help. The children had stuffed themselves on R.’s sandwiches. Zoe had been sick (she’s only 1 year old – in fact we had been to her party 1 month ago in the same place, and that’s where we got the idea for hiring it), and while I was cleaning her vomit I had to make a joke saying that it must have been our food. I just hope it wasn’t. Aurelia said Zoe likes to vomit a lot…
I got a couple of compliments for my pasta sauce – which had come from a jar, from Marks & Spencer. Joe, Melissa, Val and Feddy arrived. Warren was painting the children’s faces. Tracy was doing the filming for me, and I was just going from one place to another, talking to people. You were running around, playing. R. said (later on) that he saw you on a corner playing with the walkie-talkie Zoe had got you, just pressing the Morse code button, completely lost. So he came over and talked to you and got you out of that wormhole you were in. I think you were tired by then. Warren did you up as a witch at your request, as you watched the Wizard of Oz, recently – then had nightmares about, but now you want to be a witch all the time. Zoe got a beautiful butterfly face. Ben insisted on painting himself, saying he was a clown, but he looked like he’d been in a car crash.
Cake time arrived and I held the cake while you dad sat next to you. We sang happy birthday (you looked so happy and shy) and you started blowing the candles. As usual, Emma (Marlene’s daughter) came over to give a hand with the candle blowing! It’s quite funny how Zoe is 1 year old, Emma is 2 and you are 3 and whenever those numbers are mentioned you always associate them with the girls. You’ll say that you want one biscuit and that Zoe is 1 year old, Emma is 2 and you are 3…
R. did the cake cutting. It was funny because he was cutting massive slices of cake to give to these little children.
People slowly started to leave and in the end the three of us, Linda (Warren had left earlier, as he’s not a kids party aficionado), John, Aurelia, Zoe, Fernando and Emma were still there. John was happily drunk on red wine and invited the 5 of us (Linda and Warren too!) for dinner at their house the next day. I thought, yeah, right! Especially considering that they were going out that night to a club. Aurelia, Linda, myself and even you started cleaning up the place. You insisted on helping with the mopping and hoovering.
John, Aurelia and Zoe left, John pushing the pram with one hand and holding a glass of wine with the other. We finally got home at about 7. Francis and Caren arrived (they skipped the party due to malicious e-mails that Mary – Francis’s ex – had received, and they were trying to trace it). So we ended up having a little party of our own in here, after you went to sleep. Linda, Warren, Fernando, Emma, Caren, R. and I (Francis didn’t stay long). At that point I realised I hadn’t really eaten anything all day, and luckily there was another tub of pasta left. So we ate that and I suddenly felt alive again! We had such a laugh that night, it was excellent. I just had the best time in a long while! Apart from that little car crash…
I’ll stop now, it’s late… http://www.flickr.com/photos/plasmatika/65967443/in/set-1350732 Photos from your party- I will never forget this one! More to come as I’m on holiday.