Two of our oldest friends hosted a joint 50th birthday party at the rowing club in town last night. If I’m entirely honest, neither of us really wanted to go - we’ve both had a pretty draining few weeks/months/year, and would quite happily have had a quite night in.
We know how that goes though - when you organise a party and then worry that people will turn up - so we pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps, had a wash, put on some nice clothes, and headed out during a break in the rain that had fallen incessantly earlier in the evening.
The evening was unexpectedly wonderful.
We saw friends we haven’t seen for years, and made new ones along the way. One of the couples had been present at our last night out before adoption. Another couple had been at a music festival with us when the children were little. Several were retired co-workers.
We hadn’t planned on staying at the party long - agreeing that we would “show our faces”. We ended up staying to the end - past last orders at the bar - and wandered home laden with trays of left-over finger food.
On the way home we shared stories of our conversations throughout the evening, and I quizzed my other half on who-on-earth half the people I had been talking to were. It turned out the lovely Finnish blonde lady that had somehow attached herself to me throughout the middle part of the evening had been a Mum at the infant school where she used to work - but beyond that, we had no clue how we had common friends.
One conversation that has stayed with me today was with a couple who have risked everything to run two holiday cottages in the south west. We have stayed in one of them in the past - they are wonderful. The down-side of running a holiday cottage for let, that your family uses for the rest of the year? A total an utter erosion of your expectations of people in general. You know when you half-expect what might unfold, but quietly hope isn’t true? That. Times ten.
After sleeping in this morning, I was up a little after 9am and started putting one load after another through the washing machine. Writing this at lunchtime, the structural integrity of the poor old washing line outside is struggling somewhat. It’s sunny and breezy though, so seemed like too good an opportunity to miss.
I’ve been pottering around the house doing this and that all morning - trying to right the ship before my other half appears. The kids were supposed to be cooking us lunch, but have mysteriously vanished to the pub together to buy their own lunch with money they don’t have. In a couple of weeks they’ll no doubt be asking for money, and we’ll no doubt lecture them yet again about living beyond their means (and refusing to help them unless absolutely necessary).
It’s difficult sometimes - you obviously aren’t going to let your children struggle too much - but by the same token you want them to struggle - because otherwise they won’t learn. They need to go without. The reason we don’t have to go without is because we’ve been working our arses off for the last thirty years. Of course as soon as you try to tell them any of that, they roll their eyes and tune out.
The entitled generation is all too real.
Anyway. Time for a coffee, and perhaps a dib into the party leftovers from the fridge.