Quatre Vingts

A couple of weeks ago, my mother had a big birthday celebration in our garden.

This celebration has been over a year in the planning, conceived as an idea back when May 2024 felt like an age away, and when the plan was first mooted, it provided a much-needed focus for positivity, what with 2023 being a bit weird an’ all.

My mother decided initially that she thought she’d like an erotic dancer for her 80th. She was quite specific. But as time and circumstances moved on, she opted instead for a jazz party on the lawn, with Pimms and cake. Simple but effective – as long as the weather played ball.

We thought we had ages to prepare the Funky Little Bungalow for the birthday bash – and we did. However, ours never being a simple life, we hadn’t quite realised that we would take the roof off and dig the whole garden up just at the wrong moment, and so, by the time we were on a countdown, there were great mountains of clay-ridden mud in the front and back gardens, numerous ancient leilandii felled across the lawn, a massive unburnt pile of organic debris in front of the patio and scaffolding erected and blocking the most direct access to the toilet.

It was not ideal.

I was a little stressed. Big Seymour was quite stressed, and Mum was wondering what the hell she’d done, organising a party at ours, given our propensity for annihilating any house we live in. But the invitations had gone out, and the marquee had been booked. The jazz band were practising their set and Boy Seymour had been having extra drum lessons to learn how to join in with them. There was no going back.

Now, ordinarily, the weather forecast does not interest me very much. The weather is what it is. But we were all acutely aware that, marquee or no marquee, a soggy wet day was never going to be quite as appealing at a garden party as glorious sunshine. All we could do was hope for a dry day.

Mum had lists. Lists of food, lists of drink, lists of what she had bought and what she had yet to buy. Lists of little jobs to do in advance of the day, and lists of the bigger jobs and contingency plans. Lists of what to wear, and lists stuck to the fridge, reminding her to check the other lists.

We did a lot of shopping. We tidied up. We made planters, we swept and mowed. We put up tents and secured the cat away from the impending visiting dogs. We tidied up some more. Curiously, The Funky Little Bungalow does not stay tidy for long. Yet still, I spent most of my time in the lead up to the big day wondering how normal people are ever “ready” for any kind of event, and why no job in our lives is ever “done”.

On the morning of the party, miraculously the weather looked promising, but the eyesore aka the scaffolding was still very much… there. But Big Seymour, in his “pulling it out of the bag” style, suddenly found a workforce (predominantly female, might I add!) and stowed the planks and the towers out of sight. That just left the piles of mud, but there was no time for landscaping, and so they stayed put. I was tempted to stick flags in them, but got sidetracked with the bunting.

With the party underway, the highlight of the day was the entertainment: Uncle Bacon Nose gave a speech, the jazz band did their thing, and with their supporting act – Boy Seymour – on the drums, and my three little Seymours Numbers One, Two and Mini singing their own rendition of “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree” into the mic, I felt vicariously accomplished: I wasn’t performing, but I made most of the people who were. Yay me!

Mum organised a great gathering for her friends, and the Funky Little Bungalow came into its own, providing the space for us all to spread out and chill out; after all nobody is going to stress over a spilled drink or a dropped fairy cake when we have mountains of earth and rubble dotted around the place, and rows of tiles missing on the unfinished roof. We like to make people feel comfortable like that!

I’d like to say we raved into the evening… but we did not. It was all very civilised, we managed to find enough floor space for most of our overnight guests and there wasn’t a stripper in sight. My children excelled themselves, Big Seymour pulled it out of the bag with his tardy preparations – he even made a handrail last-minute, to stop Mum and her peers from coming a cropper on the scary steps. All in all, a roaring success!

And the valuable lesson that I have learned from this experience is that I myself am not cut out for event-planning, and without my friends and family taking control, performing and organising, my life would be very dull indeed!

#entertainingisnotforme