Party animals...

We held our first party in our own house yesterday since getting married, discounting family events like David being aged one etc. It is not that we are insular, our last big bash was Karen's 40th and we held it in a big Function Suite at Morley Rugby Club.

Anyway, it was Karen's idea which was good because if I had suggested it any unpleasant outcomes would have been my fault...

We were celebrating the 1st Birthday of Morley FM and also the celebration of the end of our recent 12 days of Christmas Broadcast. Rather than hold it in the Studios or a Pub, it gave us a chance to be more convivial and not get a taxi home! There were 11 of us in total, all but one of whom had been behind a microphone doing their bit to entertain the hordes of listeners. (In community radio, hordes is defined as more than a dozen!)

Our own experience of parties tended to revolve around a certain amount of mayhem in our younger days, so Karen was naturally worried about red wine stains on the furniture and so on. However, our furniture is not what you would call exclusive, being Habitat, Ikea and Argos based rather than expensive well made items favoured by my Parents. Indeed, much of our furniture is mongrelised to the point when we can't remember (or care) whether it was mine or Karens originally, it just is, so to speak.

Anyway, we needn't have worried. No wine stains, no breakages and as far as the comfort facilities went, no solids. It wasn't a dancing party, mostly just chat, although Martin Green was practicing for his trip to Spain the following day and indulged David with the actions to Superman and YMCA.

What started out as a few nibbles turned into a monstrous buffet as ASDA had a lot of Indian food marked down as sell today cheap in the Whoops! chiller cabinet.

The food was further supplemented by "wee timorous beasties" courtesy of Jack Bradford, our token Scotsman (2nd from bottom) and charming companion Caroline.

We had a cake as well, but we are saving that for Tuesday night, which is our Annual Meeting.

The other nice thing about parties when you aren't in the first flush of youth is that there is more booze left over after the event than before, especially when drivers bring two bottles, one (alcoholic) that they put into the pot, one soft that they sup.

It didn't entirely meet the approval of a certain 8 year old however, who was disappointed at the last-minute pull-out of Danny Mylo, our 15 year old boy wonder who is good at Playstation games and such. In a quiet aside in the kitchen, David told Karen "This party is really lame", he really watches too much American based Kids TV shows! Anyway, he kept himself amused later playing arcade and console games via a controller thingy whilst we kept up the chat, pausing occasionally to admire vintage classics such as Space Invaders, Track & Field, Mario and the like.