I find that I am now 39

It was my birthday, last week, and I decided it was about time I had a birthday party. Haven’t had one (well a proper one) since about 1995, so waste not a moment more I thought. A practice go for next year.

It has been the wettest summer in Canberra for years and years. Naturally I planned an outside garden cocktail party. And naturally it started raining at 2-30pm and by 7pm we’d had another 30mm of rain. My minions slaved away with tarps and portable heaters, 4 million helium balloons and candles, while I tried in vain to get the toddler to keep out of the water, eat his dinner, and stop setting fire to things!

Luckily, I had had the foresight to buy new martini glasses, the old ones having bitten the dust in a famous martini showdown which involved lots of stuff getting broken. And by 7-20 when there were already people wading through up driveway, I still hadn’t done my hair and make up and still wasn’t wearing any shoes, a martini seemed like the perfect solution. A few hands shot up at the mere whiff of a glass of iced gin, so I set about making some horse killing drinks. Those new glasses are big, really big. Like big would be an understatement big. Whoops there goes another bottle of gin.

I’d also taken care of the other really important aspects of planning a party, aside from using it as an excuse to buy new glassware, like matching the colour of the cutlery to the decorations and lighting the mozzie coils. And of course, following Nigella’s lead closely, I panicked around noon about being under-catered and did a last minute trip to the shops for dips and crudites for approximately 100 people. These of course, are all still sealed in the fridge, but on the plus side, I could easily cater another drinks party for 20 of my nearest and dearest this week with no notice. Who doesn’t want to be in that position? Sure, come on over.

While I utterly failed to incorporate the new music that had been hand delivered during the afternoon into my playlist, sorry Tom, the music went off pretty well too. And it rained and rained and rained. Yet we were cozy in our tent with the heater blasting away. It was all very fine.

There may have been an incident with the cat and some candles. There may also have been some pretty inappropriate propositioning of minors. There may have been some sloppy drink work in the kitchen at midnight when nearly everyone else had gone home. There may have been one or two berrocas downed in the morning.

I would like to thank everyone who braved the rain, brought me lovely presents and generally made my night.

Thanks too, of course, to my band of helpers, who I couldn’t have done without.

There are sadly, no photos. No one single one. I was too busy sloshing gin around to care.

Would you care for some rain with your party?