Party OCD.

It’s just over 4 months since we moved into our new house in North London and it seems like we are long overdue a party. So we’ve decided to have one- a joint my birthday, Lindsey’s birthday and fireworks night party as a very loose excuse for one. Now as those of you who know me at all will know- I’m not exactly relaxed when it comes to parties, in fact when they are my own I tend to be a real worry wart. This is a real bind as I’d love to be one of those people who just invites the whole world, doesn’t worry about anything to do with their house and allows any number of people to stay over and sleep anywhere. But no, this doesn’t come naturally to me. In the slightest. In fact I’m a party host anal retentive.

My thought processes go- oh god, where will everyone sleep, how will they get home, will our lovely new carpet get trashed, will we f**k off our neighbours, will we have to spend the whole weekend cleaning up other people’s mess, will people respect the house and behave, will I have time to pack for holiday the next day and will I have to politely entertain people on Sunday when I’m going to want to leave and never come back (well, at least until people have gone and the mess is minimised).

In Compton Avenue whenever there was a party, I’d get a couple of hours kip in, leave first thing, go back to whoever’s house was nearest and avoid all of the early morning noise and mingingness only to return when the coast was clear and I could crack on with some serious cleaning. Hoovering around bodies is a time consuming bore.

I’ll never forget when Dan offered to host a party for Natalia for some reason (birthday I think) and some bright spark bought half a ton of confetti which was scattered all over the floor to release it’s hot pink, green, blue colours into the lovely cream carpet. I was apoplectic. She didn’t even live with us and I remember on said occasion I was so distraught I had to wake up early to start cleaning up.

So you can see, hosting parties is a distressing affair for me. Thank god I have two level headed, relaxed co-hosts to ease the pain and share the love.

Don’t worry though it’s going to be a blast, and it’ll be even more fun for all if you all keep to the following simple rules:

1) Shoes off at the front door
2) No red wine to be brought into the house at any costs
3) No excessively loud music
4) No laughing
5) No mingling
6) No-one up past 3am
7) No-one passing out in the toilet and making it a no-go-zone
8) Strictly no flirting or copping off.

Enjoy!

(The truth of the matter is that I’ll get hammered and won’t give a toss re: any of the above, but as a worrier, I have to think about all of this and the promptly forget it all and no doubt I’ll be the one sloshing red wine up the walls and knocking on Mrs Miggin’s door to see if she wants to join in)