Mosh Pit

DrummerBoy wants a party. A CD launch to be exact . . not at the local community hall or our local The Mean Fiddler but at home. We have the space, it’s a big place with plenty of outdoor and undercover entertaining area but . . .the prospect of 100 crowd surfing, moshy, inebriated young men and women squishing my gardenias is a bit much to bear. Then there’s the risk of gatecrashers. We haven’t had problems in the past except for the night we lit a bonfire in the back paddock and left the pool room open. Some randoms came in, stole our display beer (it’s that old that it would have tasted like rusty poo), nicked a wallet and were summarily pursued by DrummerBoy and friends at 2.00am. The wallet was recovered and the perpetrators disappeared into the bush.

Then there was the ‘big’ crash when I was younger . . much younger. . . my parents had decided to do the right thing and let their independent but reliable daughter have a party. They disappeared so that we young things could have some privacy beyond the peering and disapproving eyes of parents. Armed with Earth Wind and Fire, Joe Walsh and other vinyl clasics and multiple casks of Keiser Stuhl Rose good times were happenin'.

All went well until about 10 members of a local outlaw bikie club decided that the local was boring and they’d check out our party. (Someone had told someone who had told someone). It all turned pear shaped and a fight ensued. Two boys were hospitalised, glass broken, dog poo smeared all over our cars, street lights broken and my poor boyfriend at the time, pummelled to a pulp in a walk-in wardrobe (no closet jokes please) and all without the majority of party-goers ever even knowing what happened. But that was a century ago in a suburban house on a suburban street. Still, since then we haven’t had ‘parties’ only ‘gatherings’ and strictly invitation only.

We’re on acreage but still surrounded by suburb. It's a little more remote although our once quiet dead end street (I wouldn’t call it a cul de sac, it just ends. No turning circle but with a pathway through to another road.) is now a short-cut from a plethora of drinking holes to another suburb. And, as civilisation encroaches on our back fence, noise could be an issue. The street is also busier late at night as drunken revellers noisily galavant down the road on their way home.

So . . . do I let the soiree go ahead? Of course I do. They’re older now, responsible. *gulp*. So the rules are: Invitation only, bouncers at the door (hopefully huge Tongans in black jackets), no drugs, a marquee facing the house to muffle the noise and no live music after 11.00pm (there’s a legal limit on noise levels after that time). And fingers crossed, we’ll all be pumpin’ and having a good time. Now all I have to worry about is who’s going to spew outside my bedroom window and tread dog poo through the carpet in the pool room!