So you’re thinking about doing some entertaining? This means decisions, decisions, and yet more decisions. It’s no time to be indecisive...I’m almost certain.
We like to entertain at home. I mean full-on, people-round-for-the-evening type of entertainment. We cook, they eat, they drink, we cook, they leave, we wonder if they had a good time or were drunk and whether it’s the same thing anyway.
Entertaining at home is evolving at an incredible rate. The days of just lighting a barbie and inviting acquaintances to cook their own meat on it is long gone. As are snags rolled up in white bread with tomato sauce. No, now we have to decide if we want a dinner party (bit posh), cocktail party (sounds posh but is a lot easier) or a barbie (doesn’t sound posh, isn’t that easy really and depends as much on weather as food to be a success).
Then there are the variations like the pool party – which is any of the above, only in and around the pool. This is much easier to pull off if you have plastic plates, cutlery and glasses, you have no shame about your body and you own a pool. There’s also the kid’s party where the parents, after a few beers, find themselves bouncing around in the giant inflatable castle or wrestling in sumo suits as the kids shake their heads in disgust, go inside and load the X-Box.
There are just so many aspects to consider when you’re throwing a party. Like the floor covering. Hadn’t thought of that, had you? Well, if you’ve ever just polished the floorboards and then seen the damage that several pairs of high heels can do in an evening, it’s a sight you’d never forget. I knew I should have worn my favourite pair of thongs, but one thing lead to another....And carpet....red wine – need I say more?
Then you have to decide if you want the festivities outside, inside or a combination of both. Better to make it one or the other, or everyone you want to talk to will be outside but all the people you don’t know will be with you in the kitchen when you’re trying to fry the jumbo economy pack of spring rolls in one frypan. If it’s outside, you have to think of all the creatures of the night, other than your mate Baz, that can give people a nasty bite. We’ve got a couple of those bamboo citronella lanterns. They look very Pacific Islands and stop the mozzies biting anyone over 2.5 metres tall. Any mozzie lower than that is below the fumes and continues to suck at pieces of bare flesh.
The party food isn’t too important unless someone has allergies and even then, if it’s a smorgasbord affair, they can work around it. But if the event is a dinner party, some subtle inquiry at the initial invitation stage can prevent that embarrassing conversation while you wait for the ambulance to arrive after an allergy-sufferer collapses purple-faced on sampling your Secret Prawn Surprise.
Friend-matching is even more important. The more the merrier isn’t a cliché for nothing. The more friends you invite, the more chance you have that they’ll actually like some of your other friends. Just because you like them doesn’t mean everyone else will. I once had close friends nearly come to blows when they met for the first time at a party...save that for Christmas day with the rellies.
Setting the mood music is another consideration. No two people like exactly the same music. Except maybe twins. And even then, sometimes one twin prefers the left speaker to the right and vice versa. The trick is volume: if the music is low enough nobody is really bothered, but you’ve avoided those awkward silences. If there’s a lull in conversation, people can try to work out if they’re listening to jazz, classical, or Cold Chisel.
Once the party is in full swing, there is the constant problem of clean glasses. People drink from a glass, put it down, go to the loo, forget which one was theirs and help themselves to another one. Before you know it, twenty people have forty glasses on the go and you’re serving champagne in coffee mugs.
The worst part is cleaning up the next day after they’ve all gone. Someone should invent a glass detector to track down the glasses and bottles tucked away in forgotten places. A cigarette-butt detector would do it, as most of the bottles and cans have doubled as ashtrays. But there’s an easier way to reduce the clean-up. Don’t ask people to bring a bottle, make them take one away instead.
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