The House-Cooling Party

It is traditional amongst the elite citizenry of the western world to have a house-warming party when moving home. Thus the new abode is introduced to its new owners and their friends, and vice versa. In our case, a house-warming party would be most apt, and in fact, helpful,  as there is no central heating upstairs. However there are a number of safety issues such as no carpets, exposed brickwork and splintered woodwork, missing banisters, floorboards not present in all rooms, etc. So instead we are having a house-cooling party where we say goodbye to a house we already all know and love.

I started with outside jobs. I pushed the broom around the garden. I told Jof she could clean the BBQ. I allowed Bud to do the hoovering. I awarded Jof the task of wiping down all the garden furniture. Thus exhausted, I was playing candy crush saga on Jof's tablet when he made me come with him to source wood for the bonfire. Fires are important to us and our parties, and we do have old paperwork and cardboard to dispose of. So we hit the Pompey centre and hoiked some broken pallets and 5 assorted cable drums, a personal favourite.

Gradually the Puddlers arrived. The Popses had elected to hold their own rival BBQ party so we could see Pops bouncing on her trampoline only 3 houses north of our location but sadly utterly unconnected to our own event.

We Legoed. We ate the BBQ food. We complained about unfairness, but only a little bit.

Then suddenly, the food ran out so the BBQ coals went on the bonfire, which went up a treat. I was in charge again, but only in my own head, so we took it in turns to incinerate cable drums and cardboard and pallet fragments. Erin said that the roaring of the fire was like her mummy fluffing and there was lots of raucous laughter from the beery ones, I think that was biologically unlikely but I suppose she should know her own mummy. In the end, we had all taken our turns and the adults were getting a little fractious and anxious so we left them to it. Because we had been remiss and pedestrian in our wood-sourcing efforts, the wood ran out and as per desperate measures, he called Orphan Box.

Hey bleedin' presto, the mood changed and we all waited in slavering Pavlov-dog style anticipation. The Orphan Box was opened before us, and we fell upon its promised goodness like the unwashed natives of insanity.

I found the fabled X-wing fighter of Star Wars. Johnny found the Jack Sparrow Dinghy of Doom. Ben found the X-3024 Walker of the Planet Oomph or whatever. Beth and Erin found the pink building blocks of Lego Friends. And boy O girl, we just got on with it while the grown-ups dealt with the bonfire. It's a kinda firesale in that we won't be here for much longer so the silly people took every bit of burnable material from the garden (bamboo canes, prod sticks including the flagpole and several broom sticks - apart from the legendary Doreen etc) and frazzled them. Ben went swimming through the pile of Lego so many of the components of the X-wing may be lost forever.

At about half seven, they left. Now, for some PuddleParties, this would be a mortal insult. But tomorrow is a school day so we understand.