Today was bank holiday monday in the UK and both myself and W are wiped out.
We held a barbecue at our house yesterday, and invited everybody and their dog. I think in the end there were something like 35 adults, and about 10 children. It was incredibly hard work all weekend, but worth it in the end to see everybody having such a good time.
I guess preparation really started (in earnest) on Saturday morning - we went and bought a second barbecue, and lots of food - although most of it came in the shopping earlier in the week. We also stocked up on about 40 pints worth of various beers and lagers, guessing that the visitors would all bring wine, but not drink it. We pretty much guessed right - we now have about 6 bottles of wine in the rack.
On Sunday people started arriving at about lunchtime, followed by a steady stream into the evening. Happily I didn’t end up doing all the cooking - all the dads seemed to congregate around the barbecue and offer advice or take over completely.
We were so lucky with the weather - at one point I wondered if it was going to be a washout; I had to pull a big umbrella over the barbecue to avoid getting too wet. Luckily it turned, and the afternoon and evening turned out to be perfect - not too hot, and not cold either.
Elsewhere in the garden we had various things going on - all the kids playing on the swings (actually, the kids seemed to split into two camps - the Playstation gang at the front of the house, and the slightly younger gang, playing on the swings at the end of the garden). The adults seemed to have sporadic yet violet confrontations at swingball - the most entertaining for me being the game between myself and a good Australian friend where we both ended up too knackered to play any more Our newly married friends were also rather entertaining - perhaps displaying a match of brute force versus tactics
I think the last guests headed off at about midnight, leaving W’s parents and brother to stay the night… then this morning I woke up at about 9 and got up knowing that I had a computer to fix for them before they headed home. I thought it was a bit cheeky that they arrived yesterday with the computer without telling me - it belongs to their elderly friends. In the end it only took an hour (they had the Blaster virus), but still…
Anyway - this evening is busy ticking away and I’m typing this crap into here… what on earth am I doing.