The party seems to have gone really rather well

The tidying process was slow and emotional. Tidying always is. We decided that we would only go ahead with the full whack party if we could show by the Monday before that the room would be ready and OK for Saturday.

At some point on Saturday - a week before the party we were looking like this:







Mess and gunk and boxed chaos, everywhere. Very little space in which to hold a cocktail and chat.









By the next day, things were looking better, with more floor visible and more boxes although still sitting in the room menacingly, now empty. You can see a set of jugs and stuff on the bookcase now, a trip down memory lane… some of the very first ceramics I made. The number of school books and youngsters toys that I unearthed that weekend was actually quite annoying. Why had I never thrown any of this shit out before??









By Thursday before the Party - late at night, like about 3am, we had managed to get everything open right up to the balcony. We even opened the balcony for the first time in almost two years - a mistake as it turns out as we had water coming in and trying to attack vintage copies of 2000AD magazine (featuring Judge Dredd!). Fortunately, nothing was damaged.









Friday night, we had the shag pile rug down and everything clean and ready to rock. A ridiculous amount of work went into this. There is still a great amount of rubbish in boxes hidden away in other parts of the house now.









And here we are in sunlight conditions…

In the other room, we had laid out the shag pile rug from Wednesday. This had come all the way from Romania for a ridiculously small amount.









And so Saturday morning - we woke and looked into what we would be serving everyone and how all that would work out.