Partying at weird times

As we climb the ladder of adulthood there have been 50ths all over the shop - like pop-up cafes in trendy leafy streets of obscure towns. A real buzz. We made it half way! All the jokes come out about getting the fireman on standby for when the candles are lit. All the jokes about forgetting what you were saying. It's a bit daunting getting to the midway point (and it's not really the midway point because we all know that we're unlikely to hit 100). Anyway, what was I saying? I can't remember.

Most recently two particularly excellent parties have - without intention - flanked a period of intense sadness and loss. And the timing of these two parties has been both marvellous and totally incongruous all in the same breath. These parties have been the ones where you find yourself (or it might just be me...  motheresruin and all that) knocking back any sort of liquid that is put in your hand and then sweating it out almost instantly on the sticky (or uneven grassy) dancefloor (depending on the location). 

Everyone around you is a face you know and love and if you don't know and love it, you do in that precise moment simply because they happen to be standing next to you doing exactly the same thing. The music might be a performance of Don't Look Back in Anger by a band from a Portsmouth backwater, or it might be West End Girls by an insanely gyrating DJ from West London. 

Glasses have beer or gin or flat prosecco sloshing over the rim. Choruses are yelled out - teeth-fillings flashing under the glitter ball, eyes shut, arms over the neck of whoever is dancing next to you, swaying, sweaty armpit-on-sweaty-shoulder. What a banger. What's next? Another drink? Yes yes yes. Please night don't end and fling us back to reality.

When these moments of brilliant collective insanity take place I am always thrown back to an infamous 16th birthday party hosted by a school friend. Bear in mind some of the horrors of being 16 have to be taken into account. The teen angst possibly at it's dizziest height. Her Lovely Trusting Parents had almost the entire year group to their house one Saturday night mid-term, and then her Lovely Trusting Parents retreated at some point leaving us to it, and then pretty much all hell broke loose - and we really let go on the dance floor. Or more accurately all over the entire house.  

I woke up in a bed I don't remember falling asleep in, and I had lost my contact lenses and as I dressed (I don't remember getting undressed) and walked through the house (total carnage) there were sleeping bodies strewn carelessly on floors and various bits of furniture, limbs resting at funny angles. I felt incredibly sick and I had very little memory of anything other than I knew I couldn't ever drink Malibu ever again in my entire life ever. Someone had put a foot through an actual staircase. I had to take a week off school and 3 days after I'd woken in that bed, my contact lenses rolled a full 360 around my eyeballs and reappeared back in my eyes. (A small miracle! I can see again!) It was a brilliant party. Brilliant. The stuff of legends and I can't even remember it.

When I did my sociology degree we didn't have a module on why people need parties but I bet there have been some fun studies all about this particular human behaviour. 

All I know is that there are certain times when it happens you know it's a moment and the stars align and the joyometer hits the red bulb BANG and we let it all go. It. All. Goes. Off.

And the amazing thing is that this can happen at any unpredictable moment - and just when you think you couldn't feel anything other than incredibly sad, the DJ puts on Like A Virgin and the joy trumps all. 

Humans are such weird creatures.