I once tried to organise a surprise party for my mother - I had to tell her, three days before the party, because I needed her help with the catering arrangements... I woke up from the New Years' 1996 party covered in bruises. I later remembered aquiring these after deciding I needed to sit down - in the middle of the crowded dancefloor - and everyone tripped over me... New Year 1998 was no better - I didn't get out of bed for five days following it, after downing a sizeable quantity of chartreuse... Claire and I were once at a Sleeper aftershow, and we couldn't drink because Claire was driving. So, after starting a food fight, we went to the free bar, ordered two six-packs of lager, popped them in a carrier bag and drank them at home... Still, that's nothing compared to Fuzz from Silverfish's 30th birthday, where a man broke his arm during the rooftop Mexican munchout session, and refused to go to hospital until he'd finished his pint. Now that's commitment for you...
Think that's bad?
What about the party after the aftershow where Rick Witter from
Shed Seven showed up. Everyone was strangely silent until he left
the room and someone piped up, "Getting Better? I wish they bloody
would!"... Think that's odd? I went to a party
at Sarah Smith's once, where she knew how to fulfil my desires - catering
consisted of a couple of large bottles of tequila and a giant bowl of guacamole!..
Finally, there was the party at The Stratford Asylum.
Rik and I went to the housewarming - we left six months later...
At first, we were all disappointed by how few people had turned up. We had printed up literally hundreds of invites, and delivered them faithfully around London's Goth clubs - Slimelight, Spiders and the Electric Ballroom. Yet only our closest friends had bothered to come. Still, one of them had brought a bottle of whisky, and handed it to Robin, virtually forcing him to drink it straight down. Robin, shall we say, is not quite used to alcohol. Soon, he actually began to sway, gently, from side to side. We all got rather drunk. A young couple I didn't recognise turned up - a sweet, shy boy and a girl I took an instant dislike to. Almost the second she got through the door, the girl started flirting with a pair of twins she used to date. Apparently, she had dumped one for the other. She began to tease them, trying to play them off against each other, much to the embarrassment of her current boyfriend. They disappeared into another room and began to row at the tops of their voices. Soon, they were screaming at each other. He wanted to end the relationship, and she was not taking it well.
Then Robin's girlfriend arrived. She yelled at him for a few minutes and then left with one of the twins. Robin was a little miffed at this, and was not hugely impressed when Grim tried to give him advice. Grim, you see, was a) stark staring mad, b) obnoxious and c) in the middle of an acrimonious, messy split with his girlfriend. Not exactly Claire Rayner, then. So, Robin tried to kill Grim.
It ended up with me and Robin's friend Rev J in the room next door, giggling helplessly, with a blazing row going on in one room and Robin trying to strangle Grim in another. Eventually, the somewhat tall Jem managed to pull Robin off Grim, leaving both bruised and dazed. Robin stood up, still swaying, and staggered back into the room where we were still in fits of helpless laughter.
When he had popped his jaw back into place (he has "loose joints" that can be easily dis-/re-located), Robin shrugged, picked up a mobile phone, and called his other girlfriend...
Bruce's Do
January 1996
All I remember is that it was cold. Very cold. So cold that your fingers burned when you stepped inside from the freezing air. I was wearing nothing but a black velvet dress, and I don't think I've ever felt so utterly frozen in my life. I was walking back from Bruce's party, which I had been invited to a few days before. Bruce was in a band called Pura Vida, and I knew Steve Ludwin from Pura Vida, from his Levitation days. We'd all been down the pub, and Bruce had said, come along. So we did.
We didn't really know anyone when we arrived. Well, we knew the band, but that was it. It was dark when we arrived, and very late. We got a cab the rest of the way from the station. It was a house in West London, in an area I didn't know. I went with Claire, and was glad of the company. Claire had been there when we had been invited, and although I knew Steve, she knew Bruce and the rest of the band. The place was packed, filled with cool, friendly people, with faces I'd never seen before and probably never would again, save one or two. They passed around vodka jelly and peanuts and soon after we arrived someone was throwing up in the toilet next to the kitchen. We spent most of the time in the kitchen. The party was full of people, and we didn't know them and they didn't know us, but we were having a good time. A quiet, shy creature was lurking in the corner, not quite beautiful and not quite definable. Was it male? Female? It turned out to be a seventeen year-old Ben Smith from Stony Sleep. We said, maybe on or two words to each other, a half-muttered "Hi". I went to look for more vodka jelly.
Steve was looking pretty in a white dress, with matching bra, stockings and fuck-me stilettos. There was a guy by the sink who showed us his dick. Well, there's always one. We wandered into a room where most of the party appeared to have congregated. There was a porn flick being shown, and everyone was watching it. We didn't want to watch it, but there was nothing else to do, so we watched it in embarrassed silence, because there was nobody to talk to, and Claire would rather watch it than sit awkwardly in the kitchen. In the film, a girl was having wooden beads yanked out from her anus by another girl. They seemed to be enjoying themselves.
Then another film was put on. This one was women with animals. A small monkey. A tapir. A donkey. It was quite revolting really. I pitied the obviously-drugged animals being fucked by an obviously-drugged Latin American woman. No accounting for taste, I suppose. I have never quite been able to look at a tapir in the same light again.
Still we continued to stare at our shoes. We had to stare at our shoes, because we were facing the screen, and couldn't, well, face what was on the screen. We were trapped. All the people at the party were in that room, so we had to be in the room because we were at the party. We didn't want to watch the film, so we stared at our feet for an inordinate amount of time.
The film ended and we went into another
room, where people took it in turns to play an acoustic guitar. Then,
we somehow all slept in the same bed: Steve, his girlfriend, me and Claire
all bundled up together in a big pile for warmth, curled up fully clothed
and innocent, like puppies in a basket. Great party, I said to Steve
as we left the next morning. Not exactly "great", but interesting...
My Eighteenth
October 1994
Let's prevent the usual disasters, the thinking went, and go out to dinner. I invited my ten closest friends, and we went to Pizza Hut, with my mum giving me money to foot the bill for the main courses, our guests chipping in if they wanted a dessert. One of my friends dropped out, feeling ill. Unfortunately, my sister Wendy, who I don't get on terribly well with, was visiting. "Invite Wendy," instructed Mum, "After all, she is your sister." Ah, those dreaded words. I think they're a kind of blackmail used by parents to force two people (who were they not linked by a simple genetic fluke, would never consider sharing the same city) to get on with each other.
We arrived in good time, and were seated at a table. I introduced Wendy to my friends, and tried to forget my dad's vindictive smirk as we left the house. Have fun. Oh gee, thanks. Still, there weren't an awful lot of things that could go wrong, were there? Everyone had turned up, which is usually the biggest worry with these events.
Still, it all started to go horribly wrong when the waitress came over with the menus. "A jug of water, right now!" barked Wendy, "We don't want to be kept waiting." I flushed crimson and stared aghast at her. She appeared not to notice. The waitress returned with the water and we discussed amongst ourselves what we would like to order.
Or rather, intended to. In fact, it was Wendy who decided what we were going to eat. "Jo will have the vegetarian, and you and you can share the spicy chicken..."
Words cannot describe how mortified I was. It was like going out to dinner with a sergeant major. It wasn't even her party, it was mine, and she was ruining it.
We ate, and chatted whilst we ate.
Or rather, intended to. In fact,
every time somebody came up with a light topic of conversation, Wendy turned
it into a row. "I was walking down the road the other day, and a
brawl broke out right in front of me, in a pub," remarked someone conversationally.
"If it had been me," stormed Wendy,
"I'd have marched in there and broken it up!"
"But they might have had a knife," gasped
my friend, indignantly.
"You still could have done something,"
said Wendy, disapprovingly.
It went from bad to worse. Pretty soon, my friends were afraid to open their mouths in case they got told off. We finished our meals in embarrassed silence, until thankfully Wendy had to leave to get her train.
"I'm really, dreadfully sorry," I apologised,
feeling my face grow hot with shame.
"That's alright," my friends humoured,
good naturedly, "It wasn't that bad."
I went into college the following Monday, and reached for a chair to sit upon. "Not that one!" barked Chris, imitating Wendy's august manner "You have to sit over there!" The entire room, having by now heard about the ill-fated pizza excursion, collapsed into peals of laughter.
I never lived it down.
My Nineteenth
October 1995
I didn't know many people when I moved to London. I knew Claire, obviously. We'd been penpals since we met at a Levitation gig when I'd been up in London on work experience the previous June. I moved to London more or less on a whim - I told the girl at Office Angels that I wanted to work in the media, and she said, "Move to London," so I did. Just like that. Within a couple of weeks I was settled in my lodgings and all was going swimmingly. I'd landed a plum (well, plum-ish) job at the PRS within a few weeks of moving up, and it all looked pretty splendid, actually. Claire moved to London a week later, in preparation for starting her degree.
I invited the people I did know in London along to the pub for my birthday. There was going to be a sizeable crowd, and we were all going to get ridiculously drunk together and have a great time.
Of course, nobody turned up, apart from Claire and one of her friends.
Claire's friend had heard about a party going on a few blocks away, and we didn't need much persuasion. We gatecrashed.
This party, it had to be said, was the sort of party I dream about. It was full of nice people (none of whom I knew) and the alcohol was plentiful. There was no trouble and everyone had a good time. We danced to music we didn't like, and enjoyed ourselves anyway. I fell asleep in the corner, and Claire called a cab for us.
It just goes to show that I can be enjoying myself at a party on my birthday.
So long as it is someone else's party.