Our daughter, Veronica, recently turned 18. (Yes, yes, of course I was a child bride…) And while her birthdays have been cause for much celebration over the years, I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this one.
It’s not that I was worried about Ronnie. As I wrote in a Blog not so long ago, her Saffy-like tendancies mean she doesn’t drink alcohol nor did she plan to on her 18th. But she DID want a party. And these days, an 18th is a seriously tricky event.
Particularly because Corey Worthington wrecked the plans of millions of teenagers when he held that impromptu party at his parent’s home while they were away… You know the rest. About 500 feral youths trashed his home and the neighbourhood.
So forevermore, parents will be haunted by that story, fearing the worst when their own offspring plan an 18th celebration. Like me.
The biggest issue is alcohol. Whoever is celebrating their 18th, will no doubt have many guests who aren’t yet at the legal drinking age. So how can you, as a parent, monitor who is and who is not allowed to drink grog at a party? The laws have changed, so that if you are found to be serving a minor alcohol, (including those with fake ID) you can be fined or/and potentially sued. Even if the party is in your own home…
My biggest tip for parents of younger teenagers, is to start talking about the fact that you WON’T be throwing a party for their 18th NOW. Get in early. It’s just TOO damn hard. Give them money, send them on a holiday, buy them a car – just DON’T hold a party. Here’s why.
For starters, it’s impossible to find a venue. If you don’t want to hold the party in your own home – and who would with the threat of social networking sending a locust swarm of rampaging youths to your house within minutes – then good luck trying to find a place that will. We rang restaurants, function venues, the council and even the local RSL. While our initial enquiries were warmly received, as soon as I mentioned the dreaded birthday age number – EIGHTEEN – the phone line went dead. No one wants to take the risk.
In our case, we got lucky. We booked a local church hall and paid the deposit before one of the senior vestry members rang me, spluttering with concern, that we were staging a… SHOCK, HORROR – 18th!!! Turns out there’d been some miscommunication along the way and the lovely lady who took our booking, had no idea 18th birthdays were considered such a dangerous risk. As we had paid our deposit and sent out invitations, the booking had to be honoured. Lucky us.
Ronnie with some of her guests arriving at the party
Then there’s a myriad of organisational tasks ahead. Here’s a quick checklist that might help:
1. Notify your local police about the party with the necessary details.
2. If you can afford it, hire a couple of security guards as an extra precaution against gatecrashers. We decided not to take any chances and did.
3. Have a thorough guest list and make sure those invited know they are not allowed to bring along uninvited friends.
4. Make sure there’s plenty of bottled water and soft drink available, as well as alcohol. And food!
5. Rather than alco-pop bottled drinks – favoured by lots of girls – organise a slurpy machine so you can add you own alcohol. It’s cheaper, plus you only need add a very small amount of grog to help prevent anyone over-indulging. (sneaky, huh?)
6. Organise wristbands for those that CAN drink alcohol to help bar staff or friends serving beverages, to keep it legal.
7. Call on family and friends to help on the night. The more back up you have, the better.
8. Save money on a tiered birthday-cake display. Popular cupcake stores often hire out cake stands for $30 a pop. Buy your own on-line for between $30 and $50 and you’ll have one for keeps. I bought the Giant Cupcake on the top but then saved money by making the actual cupcakes. Okay, I ‘fess up – I used packet mix from the supermarket – but still a helluva lot cheaper than the cake shop versions. The pale lilac icing was challenging… Try mixing blue and red food colouring, but go easy on the blue.
9. Organise as many games and activities as possible to distract the party crowd from grog being the focus. Fletch was a star and sorted Table Hockey and Foosball machines that were really popular – especially earlier on before the mob worked up the courage to hit the dance floor.
10. Hire a Photo Booth. This was the BIGGEST hit on the night. Again, this genius idea came from Fletch, who sourced ours from the Australian Photo Booth Company. They also provide an assistant to help, plus a range of goofy hats, glasses and fancy dress paraphernalia to give endless hours of dress-up entertainment.
Doubles are made of all the photos, so that copies can be put into an album for the birthday person at the end of the night – a fantastic momento from the evening. Even better, it arrived earlier in the day, giving our family loads of laughs taking practice shots before the party. I even managed to get in a bunny-ears shot with Ronnie. Which is just as well, because I wasn’t allowed in the main party room on the night unless I was bearing food… (Mothers are SO embarrassing.)
11. Book a GOOD DJ. I had no idea about DJs, but after talking to my niece Charlie, who knows far more about teen parties than me, I learnt there are plenty of local types who don’t cost a bomb but do a great job. So I took her advice, (about who was the most popular on the scene in our area) and it worked a treat. Again, more dancing means less drinking.
12. Worry less. You’d be surprised how well behaved our teenagers are. It’s quite shocking, really. No one vomited, no one threw any punches and I didn’t even see ONE messy drunk. Although that could be because I wasn’t allowed in the room much…
In fact, the most risqué behaviour I came across was when I flicked through the photo booth shots the next day. There WAS a little bit of random booth snogging… (Thank God – they ARE normal.)
And even though I DID worry too much, and Fletch and I worked our butts off cleaning up that messy hall with the help of my Mum and step-father, Ken, till TWO THIRTY in the morning, there was THAT smile on the face of our gorgeous daughter all night that made it completely worthwhile. In a word – incandescent.
So I had a huffy moment yesterday about Fletch FORGETTING to tell me that he met a long-held major CRUSH of mine – MR BIG – at the British TV Awards. Not even a phone call or an autograph, which would have been appreciated given I wasn’t even able to be there…
Never mind, I said, I can make my own fun and promptly got on a mini-bus yesterday with a bunch of mates and headed up to the stunning Mitchelton Winery, about an hour and a half’s drive up northern Victoria.
First stop – forget a grand tour – we headed straight to the elegant restaurant with a cosy open fireplace to get lunch and the wine tasting underway pronto.
At the front and to the left is Mitchelton’s Managing Director, Andrew Ryan, who was definitely the host with the most-est. The feast with accompanying wines to follow was truly outstanding… It’s easy to see why this is such a popular wedding venue.
Then Mitchelton’s wine expert John Beresford gave us the rundown on the various wines we’d be sampling and the fun began.
Mitchelton’s signature wines – its award-winning Print Shiraz 2009 and 1999
Then the famous Mitchelton Print Shiraz was brought to the table and it was time to see if our taste buds were clever enough to tell the difference between a 2009 or a 1999 vintage. Easy – they were both damn fine drops. Well, I guess that’s why everyone was smiling
Fergus, Sam, Nick, Amy, Alex (Stan), Dean, Kate, Andrew, Juliana, Mitch and Jack
At which point, looking at our group, it suddenly dawned on me what a bloody fine looking bunch of people we’d put together. I mean, really, with big strong Aussie men like these, who needs Mr Big???
A sensible person suggested it was time to get going, so we did the usual exit – through the Gift Store! Wow – a treasure trove of gourmet treats and fabulous wine…
The final treat before we stumbled into the mini-bus for a rowdy drive home (via McDonalds) was the view from the Michelton Tower at dusk. Truly superb. A fitting end to a beautiful day. I mean, really, who needs Mr Big???
Even after centuries years of marriage, I sometimes still have cause to look at Fletch in amazement, shake my head and say ‘Really? Seriously? I mean, you REALLY, even now, still don’t GET me?’
I mean, he couldn’t understand me, could he? Not when I only find out LAST NIGHT that while he was swanning around at the British TV Awards last week he met and had a photograph with MR BIG. Yes… THE Mr Big, of Sex and the City fame. AND he FORGOT to tell me!!!
Mr Big (aka Chris Noth) and Fletch at the British Soap Awards
How in a zillion years could you forget to relate such a momentous meeting?
Me, who has always been such a HUGE Sex and The City fan. Me, who has the entire box set of every series, who adores Sarah Jessica Parker, who aspired to be my own version of Carrie and who obsessed over Mr Big for years?
Not even a phone call on the night? He could have passed the phone to my fantasy beloved and we could finally have had a REAL conversation??
Seriously peeved. But that’s fine. He can have a ball, kicking up his heels with the rich and famous in London… because I can make my own fun. And I will. I’m heading off to a winery now for a VERY long lunch. Let’s see how that goes….
(And yes, I have AGAIN failed to stick to my Blogging schedule as today was SUPPOSED to be Fashion Friday Blog, but I needed to vent. In fact, I think a signature of my Blogs will be the footnotes at the end of each story, explaining and justifying WHY I haven’t stuck to my own Grand Plan, yet again. And again. Well, the art of rationalisation is something to be admired, isn’t it??)
Ah, the best laid plans of mice and men… I had to find out where that saying actually came from this morning as I sat down to explain the irony of my GRAND PLAN gone wrong. Turns out it was from way, WAY back – from a poem by Robert Burns, called ‘To a Mouse’, that he penned in 1786.
Yes, on Tuesday I put a Blog out to the world, declaring how organised and reliable a Blogger I was going to become – with different themed stories for each day. And while I stated clearly I was never intending to Blog EVERY day, I had hoped to keep to the schedule for…hmmm… well… I guess, at least a week or two.
But NO, let’s just kick that plan to the ground and stomp it into smithereens on DAY ONE shall we? Why not, dear stomach? Why not take on a terrible bug that makes me so ill I can barely move from my bed? Thank God I was at least well enough before it really took hold, to get to a hair colouring session with Linda, (who I Blogged about last week), because God knows she’s so booked up I might not have gotten another appointment till Christmas…
Then I came home and fell in a heap. With legs heavy as lead, I collapsed into bed and you don’t want to know the rest. Suffice to say it involved the bathroom and it wasn’t pretty. And then I slept. And slept.
The irony being that I WAS going to write about healthy stuff today – Thursday being my self-appointed Blogging day for fitness, recipes and diet tips – but who am I to dish out advice, feeling like this?
I will offer one piece of advice though. Earlier in the year I blogged about trying the ‘Sugar Free’ diet. Which, on my terms, meant I was allowed to eat anything that had five per cent or less sugar, plus wine. (in moderation!) I was proud of myself for lasting more than six weeks and I felt great. But since ditching this concept, largely due to laziness, I reckon the old bod has taken a turn for the worse. Not only in terms of putting on a few kilos (AGAIN!) but in terms of general well-being and feeling good about the world.
And you know what? Just before I got knocked down by this tummy bug, I had a MASSIVE chocolate binge. Yep, a few layers from a block of Cadbury Crunchie chocolate topped up by half a pack of these little buggers. Chocolate bullets. And they hit their target. Not long after, it was all downhill.
See? Sugar really is Sweet Poison. I’m getting back on that health kick thingie pronto. I must make another plan…
I was thrilled to see a girlfriend’s name pop up on the mobile this morning and very much enjoyed our half hour chat. Especially as it’s been a bit of a bugbear for me lately that people just AREN’T making the effort when it comes to communication.
We lead such busy lives, that often it’s easier to just send a text or an email. But nothing beats a REAL conversation. Dry words on an electric device just don’t carry the same depth and meaning and can often lead to mis-communication.
Take this example last week when I received a text message from a girlfriend in the UK after she spied Fletch making an appearance on a TV show over there.
‘No email, no text. He just turns up on Loose Women. Don’t worry about us. We’ll be Okay.’
Wow – my eyebrows to nearly hit the ceiling. My first reaction was – ‘Of course, she’s joking.’ But what if she wasn’t? What if she was genuinely offended we hadn’t let her know Fletch was heading over there?
And that’s the problem with text messages – there’s no TONE in them. We can’t hear the sarcasm, the dry irony, the jesting voice – and that’s where the miscommunication comes in. Luckily in this instance our lovely friend was OF COURSE joking, but it did give me cause for a few unsettled moments until we clarified the issue.
Likewise, I’ve been told by a few friends lately that I need to be a better blogging communicator – that I need to have a BLOG PLAN so that readers know what to expect from this website. They want a clearer picture of what’s coming up on which day.
Point taken. I get that. And especially as you may have noticed some new advertising at the top and bottom of these posts, I’m aiming to put in more effort to make this magazine-style Blog a more professional venture.
A promise to my readers to kick off with – I vow NEVER to allow POP-UP advertising on this website. I abhor those.
I can’t promise to post a Blog every day – (even Fletch thinks that’s overkill) – but I’ll try to stick to a certain theme or topic for each day of the week. So the Blog Plan I propose is this:
MONDAY – A feature interview or opinion piece on a topical issue
TUESDAY – A light-hearted look at life or a family story
WEDNESDAY – Beauty tips or a review of the latest products
THURSDAY – Health forum, dietary advice and recipes
FRIDAY – Fashion review and Internet shopping tips
SATURDAY AND SUNDAY – Most likely rest days, but if I’ve been to a fun social event, I’ll post pics here and call it The Social Pages.
SO that’s the plan. Stay tuned to see how it pans out. But right now, isn’t there someone you need to phone?
