A cautionary ta e
Themed parties can be great fun, but be too zealous and your house will become a hallucinatory melange that may be too much. WOrds: Paul Dale
t was 1995. Her name was Allison. an
Australian in London and the only girl who
had been able to survive nine months in our fleapit of a shared house. She was leaving us for reasons we never really ascertained. but we knew we had to have a party to mark her passing. ‘What sort of party do you want Al?‘ we asked her in that void that exists between This Morning finishing and the respectable hour to start drinking. ‘808 — I want an 803 party.‘ she said.
‘What? Acid house and yuppies?‘
‘No. early 80$ — The Smiths. Aztec Camera . . .‘
‘Talk Talk. I've got every single they ever produced.‘ our Spanish friend Dave butted in with that voice. made up of equal parts gravel and stupidity.
It was agreed and the next few weeks were as busy as they get for the terminally unemployable. The word went out. everybody seemed keen, we reguisitioned an old turntable from a skip and added it to the crap stack system in the parlour. Dave agreed to bring around his entire 808 singles collection. balloons and huge tOy mobile phones were brought as props. and we even put our giros together and brought the BOs-est drugs
we c0uld think of: baking powder-heavy speed. tamazepan. cheap acid and heaps of Kestrel and cider for snake bites.
The night in question started swimmingly. Dave turned up in a spine-length blond wig. marched straight up to the decrepit decks with his records and without saying a word hit us with ‘The Final Countdown'. Siouxsie. Nena. Magnum PI (me) and Morrissey rocked that filthy room like it was 1999 . . . or 1982. at least.
Then we took the drugs and started to drink heavily as guests arrived. Before I knew it. Larry Blackmon was in the kitchen showing off his codpiece. three Mrs Thatchers and Cyndi Lauper were knocking the DJ table with their puffball bustles and Madonna had her hands down Zodiac Mindwarp's pants in the overgrown back garden. Me? I was trying to stand up to the appalling retro-cocktail of substances I‘d taken. I stumbled down the hallway past Loadsamoney. who seemed to be dismantling the wood-panelling. and passed out a metre short of my room. I awoke to the sound of Mr Ghosh. our landlord banging on the door. Our tenancy had expired.
themed parties
Tired with all those James Bond and toga parties? Why not take a whole new approach to embarrassing yourself with our top ten alternative suggestions?
1 25 years into the future
2 Alice In Wonderland (don't forget the LSD)
3 Tourists
4 Gone With The Wind lbring your own Oscarsl
5 Willy Wonka
6 Characters from history
7 Olympics 8 Around the Worl o 9 Barbie 8. Ken
1 0 Colours
iii—2".) NM 208‘ THE LIST 21