I hate throwing parties. For one thing you never fully enjoy a party that you are throwing yourself. There's far too much running around making sure that everybody else is enjoying themselves. And you have to expend a modicum of time with each guest so you never really get to have a conversation with anyone.
But the main problem with parties is the fact that it provides a potentially brutal barometer of one's popularity. First of all there's the decline-ratio: the proportion of the people you want to be there that don't want to be there. And in my case (having only been in the country for 8 months) there's the thorny question of having people to invite at all.
On both counts I have to say I was very pleased. When I sat down to prepare a list of invitees I was slightly worried that it would be depressingly short. I quickly realised that I had nothing to worry about there. There are friends from work, friends from my old house-share and of course the netball team. The decline ratio was also pretty good. And my little house was duly packed on the night.
My two sofas had arrived at 6:30am on the morning of the party. The only other furniture consisted of 5 milk crates and this fridge that arrived mid-afternoon.
Mandy and Aoife brought me shopping for all my party needs. (I would have been lost without them). The two continued much of the running during the party. I took each new guest on a tour of the property, while Nathan began an industrial scale production-line of baby-Guinnesses.
I'm very content that the party went exactly as I had hoped. Above all I had a strong sense that the people who had gathered there were of the highest calibre, and I'm deeply happy to have made friends with so many genuinely pleasant people so quickly after arriving in a new country.
More photos here.
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