Let’s party

Summer’s finally here – you can tell because of the sweet sound of beer cans rolling down in the gutter at dawn as the post exam parties roll through town. It began in the North, as so many good things do, with a shock news story of a student house collapsing into the basement because the floor couldn’t support the weight of 100 revelling students. I read about it with the vicarious thrill of a Londoner 200 miles away until I recognised the name of the Manchester suburb where it happened and made a panicky phone call to Ella who had finished her exams but had yet to come home. “I know,” she said, trying and failing to reassure me with the news that only one person was hurt and that all the people she knew who’d been there had been “just fine”.

Last night it was the turn of the student house in our street to celebrate the World Cup coinciding with barmy warm evenings by holding a sedate football-themed affair. While Katy was wrapped up in her yellow and green Brazil scarf cuddling her World Cup mascot watching the opening ceremony Cleo was still closeted away with her biology past papers feeling as if she was the only person still revising in the world. Meanwhile the rest of us huddled round the TV each one of us exclaiming in turn as we came into the room, “I didn’t know Jennifer Lopez was Brazilian,” until I thought Ella was going to draw up a sign in frustration as she explained, for the fifth time. “She’s NOT!”’

My Brazilian (blow dry), meanwhile, is settling in nicely, though I have to say, as an innuendo magnet it’s hard to beat. “Ooh is it part of a matching set?” asked one of my colleagues, innocently. “Are you sure you were at the right end of the table?” inquired another. That’s what happens when you work with teachers – smart Alecs everywhere you look.

They’ll be asking what happened to my vuvuzela next. Thankfully they have gone the way of the Rubik’s cube and clackers. However, that’s so last season at my house. Thanks to an impulse buy from Sports Direct when I was, by rights, shopping for socks, we picked up a couple of yellow and green lookie-likey hand grenades and our house is now shaking to the hiss of the caxirola. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNH6CzcU07s]

Posted by Amanda Blinkhorn