Monday 14th March

The morning after the night before.  Not much sleep I am afraid as the music kept going round in my head and a touch too much alcohol in the system.  But by the morning, though groggy, I was sort-of okay.  And looking back, what a swell party it was.  My wife and I do parties well; weeks of planning, excursions to food shops, last minute changes of plan and we were finally ready.  We had of course over done everything, too many guests, though as it turned out it was all okay on the night.  Literally only a couple of cancellations, and there were at least seventy people.  Our dear friends Maxine (cake maker extraordinaire) and Graham (king of the Barbeque) were fantastic.  Rob Russell played brilliantly all night too.

We started at Seven, and Graham lit the thre barbeques and managed around ninety burgers.  We had had weeks of fairly poor weather with lots of rain, but the gods shone on us, it was a sunny warm day and a mild evening.  We held the party all downstairs in our very large garage.  Around half the people stayed inside but many sat or stood outside so although we had panicked about chairs we had enough in the end.  Lots of people got up and danced and Graham led us through two conga’s.  I danced nearly all night and had a wonderful time, despite trying my best to poop the party by my rendition of “Joan of Arc” by the blessed Leonard.

Most people stayed till well after 11 and the last few left just after midnight.  I tumbled into bed around one.  Cleaning up was pretty easy as well, as it is a tiled floor.  The next day and I opened up my presents…..lots of lovely wine to drink and a painting by Dominique Bocher.   What a lucky boy.