Acceptable in the 80s...

Carnage, cocktails and costumes - the three Cs of a successful party! I feel surprisingly fine today. Maybe it's because we've only just finished clearing up the residual crap so have had something else to concentrate on all day - or maybe it's down to the fact that I gave up on the Del Boy cocktails and started drinking the non-alcoholic plain pineapple juice when it all became too much round about 11:30pm when the 80s dancing competition ended? Hmmm. Anyway, it was like, so totally awesome.

Fashion Wheel, Kerplunk, Spirograph, Screwball
Scramble, Operation, cocktail umbrellas, armbands,
neon...how many 80s relics do you remember?

Everybody made the effort to dress up which was brilliant. Neon Barbie and Ken (matching sun visors and vests!), Madonna (more bracelets and lace than you could shake a stick at), The Hoff (with curly wig, chest hair, leathers and orange skin), Alex Drake (Ashes to Ashes), the 1984 LA Olympics, many generic 80s costumes in varying neon colours featuring legwarmers and awful make-up - and we had two iconic 80s doctors in our presence - Ghostbuster Dr. Egon Spengler and Doc Emmett Brown, to bring a bit of science to the proceedings. Egon's proton pack was made from a cereal box wrapped in a bin liner with a vacuum hose poking out of it. Genius.

All you need for a DIY 80s party:

Food
Anything full of sugar, colourings, and leftover from primary school birthday parties - fairy cakes and crispy cakes, crisps (Space Invaders and Monster Munch), party rings, jammie dodgers, rocket lollies, pickled onions and cheese on sticks. I topped it off with a Mr. Men birthday cake.

Cocktails
'Del Boys' - pineapple and coconut juice, Malibu and pineapple slices (from a can of course). 'Club Tropicanas' - orange and mango juice, peach schnapps and lemonade. Decorate both to the hilt with mini umbrellas, those plastic monkeys, glittery streamers on sticks and fruit in the glass.

Music
My crap 80s iPod playlist came in VERY handy. Gather up as much electro-pop and synth as you can. Think Wham!, Cyndi Lauper, MJ, The Boss, A-ha, Kylie, one hit wonders plus film soundtracks. And make sure you have an 80s dancing competition.

Costumes
Several people picked an 80s character or icon, but most dressed in general 80s attire. Armbands, legwarmers, off-the-shoulder tops, big hair, crimped hair, lace, bangles, stilettos, and - would you believe it - as much neon as you could possibly wear.

Games
We all raided our garages to procure such relics as Fashion Wheel (still with its original coloured pencils!), Operation, Rubik's cubes, Kerplunk, Spirograph and Screwball Scramble. I also found a bag of Trolls. The drunken Kerplunk tournament was a particular highlight, however.

Decorations
Afore-mentioned bag of trolls came in handy to decorate the room. As did streamers and balloons in as garish-as-possible colours, luminous table confetti, Barbies, My Little Pony, (I think someone may have brought a Care Bear?) and just general neon-ness.

Dude. It was like, so totally tubular.

Our survey said...

Last night turned out to be a success in the end. No hitches with the Chinese food (thankfully, after the cooking week from hell), seven happy people and not an exploding spring roll in sight. Except, apparently my cocktails (Gatsbys) were a wee bit too lethal for some. My friend S texted me today to say she is never drinking them ever again. I can only hope she managed to keep her head out of the loo long enough to salvage some of her Sunday. (S: What was in those bloody cocktails? Me: Southern Comfort, ginger and lime. S: Southern Comfort? Southern Hell! Me: Oops.) Oh dear.

Actually, it was probably the fault of the toxic cocktails that we all started playing a very merry version of Family Fortunes (with buzzers, 'our survey said' sound effects and everything - it was most exciting for a bunch of sozzled individuals). It's always the way when you've had a drink - even innocent games become innuendo laden. This was no exception. The air was positively blue. Even more so since we were in the presence of The Man Who Can Make Anything Into a Double Entendre. My Other Half took up the role of game show host/Les Dennis for the evening and even he struggled to keep his composure as the answers just kept getting worse and worse. This was a very tame one before the second pitcher of Gatsbys made an appearance:

Les Dennis: "Name something you might find in a church."
Team A: "Love beads!"
Team B: "A threesome!"

And it got slowly worse.

Anyhoo. For no apparent reason, the night then progressed into what can only be described as a gurning competition. You can imagine those pictures, I'm sure. Our living room was taken over by a herd of insanely grinning, cross-eyed, elasticated-mouthed lunatics. And on almost every photo, my face is apparently made of rubber and I look like the second cousin of Jim Carrey on day release from a mental ward . I really must work on that.

Hello, darkness my old friend...

The nights are drawing in and the clocks have gone back, and my office is full of people complaining about getting up in the dark and leaving work in the dark. The car needed de-icing this morning. The winter cometh. It's fantastic! Cosy nights in are the business. But I was thinking, you really don't realise just how much you rely upon electricity for mundane things, especially when it's dark all the time. The other night we had a power cut of epic proportions (well, I say epic - it lasted for all of two hours. But the Law of Sod descended upon us and clicked the power off just as we'd settled down to watch a DVD).

Not just our house or even the street - it felt like the whole village had been knocked out when we stood outside and stared over a dark valley. The total blackness and rolling valley mist were quite creepy and atmospherical, and it would have been eerily quiet had it not been for the house alarms going off on their emergency power and the regulars in the pub down the road making their opinions on the matter known to all most profusely. None of this would have been so much of an issue in the summer - we'd have just gone outside and carried on as normal or lit the barbecue or something. But as it's October, I had to make do with trying to read a book by candlelight, which didn't last long. I got as far as three pages and gave up and went to bed - spilling my Ribena in the process. (Yes, I drink Ribena. No, I am not a five year old. Hey, it tastes nice.)

So, instead of counting sheep, I attempted to recall games you can play in the dark. And here they are (clean ones, people!):

• Murder in the Dark - I can't remember exactly how to play this; but remember it at birthday parties in dark rooms. It involved some sort of murderer, detective and suspect shenanigans, but the rules escape me. I seem to recall testing out several 'death poses' and fake fainting, however.
• Sardines - a version of hide and seek in the dark. One person hides and seekers move around in the dark whispering "sardines" and listening for a whispered response from the hidden person. Fairly boring, but there's the added danger of falling over something.
• Pimped-up hide and seek - use glow sticks, those stupid fibre optic pen things you get at firework displays and torches to play hide and seek indoors or out. Again, could be interesting if your garden is filled with exciting things like ponds. Mine is not.
• Ghost stories - a staple of pre-teen sleepovers, usually resulting in weaker members of the herd crying to go home for fear of the serial killer with a hook. Usually involved sitting in a circle taking turns to pass a torch around and tell a story. Many sweets were consumed.
• Twister in the dark - does what it says on the tin. Things could potentially get a bit risque and you should really be careful where you put your foot. Ooh er.
• Glow-in-the-dark cocktail party - not really a game, but this idea is wearing thin and I'm clutching at straws now. Use glow-in-the-dark martini glasses and provide glow-in-the-dark accessories for guests to wear. This sounds like more fun than games anyway. I'd happily swig a cocktail anytime, day-glo or otherwise.

Oh, I can't remember anything else. The power surge must have shorted out my head as well as my house. Perhaps that's why this working week is so supremely awful.

The Golden Girls do tapas...

For the first time in a long while, I forgot all about work over the weekend and had a bloody good time. On Saturday it was my Other Half's birthday, and although he was going out early sans me (to - eurgh - a football match of all things, but it was his birthday and that's what he wanted to do, so hey ho) we still had presents and breakfast in bed before he headed off until the small hours of Sunday. But this left me to do one of my favouristist things ever - cook! And not just any old cooking - cooking for the girls! That's the best kind. Friday night I went shopping for lovely things. I'd decided to make tapas so the trolley was filled with lots of Mediterranean eats. And the ingredients for sangria. Oh yes, this was gonna be a good 'un.

Saturday daytime was great - a cloud of chorizo smells filling the house; me singing along badly (I can't sing any other way) to the radio; feeling a bit Nigella-ish and looking forward to a good girly gossip. They didn't disappoint. My sides hurt for hours with giggles. Over dinner (which, true to form, there was far too much of. 'Serves 4' my arse. I could have fed a stadium) the wine and the gossip started to flow. I think the tale of the horrendous blind date my friend S had with a monotone Irish dude (reminiscent of The Most Boring Voiced Priest in Father Ted) and his love of chamomile tea was my personal favourite. I tried to re-tell the tale the following day to my bemused Other Half and couldn't because of the giggles.

We'd all decided to bring some school memorabilia around for a laugh, so apres eats retired to the living room to the sounds of PJ and Duncan (an inspired CD choice from friend C) and collapsed into drunken laughter over old photos and letters as the sangria was poured. Flicking through hysterical letters from friend J, my awful photos, drawings from S and poems from C, we realised that we were all in fact evil cows at school and are going to hell because of it. Anyway, it was so worth it. I haven't laughed as much in ages. And - bonus - I hoped the two pints of water (and the ice I was trying to find for about an hour before twigging it was in the freezer) I downed before I went to sleep would dilute the sangria in my bloodstream enough for me not to be hungover on Sunday. And it worked - hurrah! I am invincible. And will be living on tapas for a week. If the Other Half doesn't polish it all off, that is.

Sometimes all you need is a girls' night to make things right. Here's to another 50 years of them at least. And to lazy Sundays watching Police Academy 4 on the sofa. There is no end to my classiness.

Nuclear cocktails and red hair...

You can't beat a good cocktail. Especially half-price ones on a Thursday night. Which is the conclusion myself and some gal pals reached this week when we took our twenty-something nostalgia out in our kitten heels to the former haunt of our seventeen-year-old-selves. They'd cut the cocktail menu in half since we were last there (or were we now just old enough to know what we liked to drink instead of working our way down the whole menu?) but we still managed to quaff our way through several bizarrely-titled tipples.

It would have been rude not to have twice as many since they were half price anyway, was our philosophy. So, after several Caribbean Romances; Total Knock-Outs; a few of that old staple - Sex on the Beach; and a one whose name I forget but was a rather strange radioactive-glowing-green Incredible Hulk colour, we consequently spent the night cackling in the corner like the Witches of Eastwick reminiscing about the ridiculous fashions we used to sport in the very same bar almost a decade previous, planning to take a trip together and generally having a good old gossip about things I couldn't possibly repeat. Friday morning I woke up - mercifully still on holiday - with a headache only fizzy tablets can cure and thirst like no other.

Still, I had an appointment to keep and since my hair has taken on a life of its own and turned into rabbit-hutch hay over the past few weeks, I wasn't about to miss it. Plus I fancied a change of colour. My hair's been the colour of stringy dull rat tails for too long. Wasn't sure what yet, perhaps inspiration would hit me in the stylist's chair. It did. Not only am I very pleased that the straw-like quality has disappeared, but the length has been halved and I now have a swept fringe. Plus I'm chestnutty-red. And don't have to get up specially an hour earlier in the mornings now to wash and straighten my tresses. Anything that gives me an extra hour in bed is fine by me.

Maybe I should rename this 'the indecisive musings of a blasé partial-redhead?' Not so catchy? Yeah, well, it'll probably wash out soon anyway.