Party On

Today

We had a delightful time on Sunday, off to Glyndebourne to see "the Turn of the Screw". A pity we had to miss the family & friends coming to the flat to celebrate Becky's birthday. Still, as Becky had bought the tickets as a Fortieth anniversary present, there was no contest really.

We chatted to some other opera-goers about this. "Ah", they said knowingly "She just wanted you out of the way while she parties." We laughed. "Certainly the value attached to getting parents out of the way goes up as the children get older", I joked. "But I'm not complaining!"

In My Day

As I was growing up I heard many horror stories of young peoples' parties getting out of hand (the stories got into the newspapers which shows what a new phenomenon they were back in the '60s) but never seemed to have any friends who'd actually trashed their parents' house.

Eventually, of course, we had to consider the issue of the girls having parties in their teens. Maybe it was because we lived so far in the country that roving young 'uns were unlikely to turn up or because the size of the family meant that most parties mainly consisted of cousins, but we rarely had problems. Lizzie never seemed to mind much if we were around anyway.

Becky, who loved her independence, preferred to strike a bargain. One Christmas (about 1993, I think) she asked if she could have a party while we were out at the annual Flare Xmas do. We had planned to stay overnight in Bath. "OK", we said "We're doing some Christmas shopping and expect to be back about four. So you've time to get it in order. Get this wrong and it's the last time." A little anxiously we set off for our own frolics (consisting, I seem to remember of a crazed murder mystery event). The following day, having done a fair bit of shopping we phonedBecky to warn her that we were on our way.

The house was gleaming - just one little wine stain which Becky was busily cleaning up. She'd certainly kept her side of the bargain and earned a few more points in her progress towards independence.

When, a few years later we trusted her alone in the house for ten days during Glastonbury Festival week, and found the house equally immaculate on our return, friends laughed at our gullibility. "What about all those wild parties she had while you away?" one scoffed. "Well", I said "if she did have parties, she can clearly handle it as everything was tickety-boo."

And even though chocolate from a chocolate fountain hit the ceiling during Cousmass 2005, causing Becky to have a complete sense of humour bypass, it was all cleaned up by the time we returned and we only knew about because the girls told us.

As we knew some people whose apparently docile daughter invited a trashing set of local youths to the house during parental absences, not once but twice (I think CDs melted into the carpet featured), we feel rather proud to have such a reliable daughter.

And I was sorry to miss seeing the little ones and Richard's family on Sunday.