Blake: my bar-b-q hero

Wow! What a party! I gave up counting after 50… but last night, confirmed what my partner and I suspected for a while now, we have some amazing friends and such a variety of people as well, who magically all seemed to get on well. There were some interesting conversations and new friendships happening and lots and lots of laughter.
I kinda messed up the main bar-b-q (we had two, one for meat items, one for veggie stuff) and the bigger bar-b-q just wasn’t lighting so Blake stepped in and instantly became my hero, because not only did he get the ‘q going, he then told me to bugger off and mingle and cooked pretty much most of the food! I kept checking he was OK and he just kept giving me a solemn look and telling me that everything was fine and to go enjoy myself. Blake you rock.
Our little garden was fit to burst; we had taken out a fence panel so that people could go into the boy’s garden where there was a second marquee and disco lights!
The band, DUCS (Dulwich Ukulele Band) were causing some excitement because some people couldn’t even remember whether they had ever heard a ukulele! 8 DUCS turned up and blew everyone away. They were absolutely brilliant and comments afterwards included “can I get a CD of theirs?” (they are currently recording – watch this space), “when is their next gig, I’d love to see them again” and “no party will ever now be complete without live music!” So special thanks to Peet (my partner’s brother and band member) for organising for them to be there and play. Although thanks to all of them for playing just so damn well!
The nice thing was we had a couple of neighbours turn up; a fellow dog walker and her partner (not strictly neighbours in the geographic sense) and two guys that live down the road.
We took a lot of pride in how much people liked our home and garden and did several tours! We’d had the carpet professionally cleaned again and had spent the day cleaning so everything looked really good.
This morning, things don’t look so polished! But my partner has been up for a while pottering around and straightening up and for those of you environmentally minded, everything has been recycled, left over food composted and stale beer used as a natural slug treatment (they LOVE beer and will get drunk, fall in and drown…)
Pluto was a star. He was generally quite relaxed but got a little over-excited at one point so he had a time out in the front room which we had made his space with his blanket, toys, food and water. But otherwise, he was fantastic and a very big hit!

My partner talked excitedly about the Halloween and Tupperware party we are planning to host, but last night once we chased away the last straggler, I was just happy to drop into bed and go out on a high!

Work tomorrow and frankly I’m feeling very unenthusiastic. I suppose part of that is because I’ve been off now for a week and it’s always hard to go back after a period away but also, I guess I’m just feeling a bit uninspired and need to look at ways to increase my work satisfaction. After all, you get out what you put in…


By the way, in answer to the question that I was (surprisingly) asked several times yesterday; will you publish your children’s book on your blog? Yes. But the little lady for whom the story was written will have the first ever copy and then I will publish, so expect to see the first instalment early September.

Anyway, for anyone that reads this and was at the party, thank you so much for being there and we both hope you had a great time. xx