Family Affairs and other matters

Well. Predictably, I had a REALLY lovely time at gorgeous friend’s beautiful, sparkly party where everyone looked divine (in maxi dresses mostly) and the champagne and mohitos and strawberry daiquiri’s were endlessly flowing and I did WAY too much drinking and not nearly enough eating and loads of dancing and talking and laughing and suddenly it was 3.30am and time to go home.

I had reluctantly agreed to my teenage son having “a few” friends round whilst I was out. He knows the rules. Nobody allowed upstairs, no more than 10, be responsible bla bla bla. I obviously hadn’t provided any alcohol, but expected them to have a couple of beers each. As they have just finished GCSE’s and could frankly be in Newquay or Portugal or a music festival, I felt allowing him a degree of freedom was going to be OK. He’s training for his rugby tour. He’s generally fairly good at moderating his own intake.

The text I got at 00.32 should have pre-warned me:

“What time r u bac? Don’t come bac till like 2 ish pls. Like sleep on the floor somewhere xx”

WTF??

Followed at 2.57am by

“T is in living room. G is in A’s room, me and O are in my bed. Problem with shed door as someone ran into it but I’ll fix it tmw am. Love u xxx”

So, when we got home, a little worse for wear and tiptoed about in a slightly drunken manner to my bed, imagine my horror on finding my bare foot encased in a pile of vomit BY MY SIDE OF THE BED!! Efforts had clearly been made to open my window and I suspect that whoever was doing something in MY BED tried in vain to vomit out of my bedroom window (which perhaps was just as well because it would have landed on top of my new soft top car).

This morning, I came downstairs to find very guilty looking teenage son who had cleaned up the kitchen ridiculously well and mended the shed door….. he said he didn’t realise anybody was upstairs…..yeah right. He is in so much trouble.

It is a very difficult issue this kids and alcohol thing. If we were in the States I would be held responsible should there be any disasters. Same in France – the owner of the house providing alcohol (be it restaurant/bar or private home) is responsible. When I asked him where all their supplies came from he told me that most shops sell them alcohol because they look 18 and they don’t ask for any ID. I think this is shocking, but perhaps it’s more shocking that I went out and left them to it. Perhaps I made a mistake and shouldn’t have trusted him and his friends. They managed to buy a keg of beer without any problem. The girls were drinking vodka. Some of them use fake ID’s.

I am now about to go and do a HUUUUGE supermarket shop because my 8 year old has his birthday party this afternoon for 22 friends. What a nightmare. I’m not sure how I’m going to get through it.

Help.