curioser & curiouser

last weekend i went to a tea party. it was quite a large tea party, and quite an extravagant tea party, but a tea party nonetheless…

now, i wouldn’t exactly claim to be an expert on tea parties…in fact, if i am honest, i might as well admit i haven’t really put in the hours as far as tea parties are concerned, but i would be willing to bet my last cucumber sandwich this was the best tea party ever.

how many tea parties have you flown 3641.34 miles to attend?

of course, i don’t mean to mislead you, so i will take this time to explain that, while the aforementioned gathering had much in common with the traditional notion of a tea party…i mean, there was, tea…well, not tea, per se, but there was pimms, which could easily be mistaken for tea…and there were tea pots, albeit stuffed with haribo…and there was jelly! yes, jelly you would find at a tea party – although, perhaps the vodka component might not always come as standard…hmmm…

Party! there you are. there was Party. good, old fashioned, celebratory, fantabulous, food-shovelling, booze-guzzling, bone-rattling Party.

And there were guests…gloriously attired! (for the most part)…until things all got a little bit naked! but that was later…(for the most part.)

yes…while this tea party had a few physical traits heredited from its ancestors…it was still a very unique affair that took place in the Old Farm holiday camp in Old Jersey.

So, what exactly do you call it when a pile of 50+ fun-hungry revellers, oodles of sugary snacks, a menagerie of over-sized games, shed loads of booze, a dance floor and 14 papier mache mushrooms combine to wreak havoc on a summer’s eve?

Why,  it’s a Mad Hatter’s Tea Party!

Everything started off very civilised…there was Alice, and some of her friends; Tweedles Dum and Dee, the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the Jaberwocky, the White Queen and a plethora of lesser known characters…there was flamingo croquet, giant-sized jenga, enormous playing cards, and an inflatable darts board all accompanied by a steady stream of liquid encouragment.

there were challenges, speeches, coordinated dance routines, food frenzies, toasts, tipples, totally uncoordinated dance routines, and upwards of 800 unmissable photo opportunities.

one of the advantages of holding your tea party or party party on an island is that you have to import your guests ahead of schedule, in order for them to clear customs/acclimatise/earn their invitation as slaves. and this occasion was no different.  the boundless enthusiasm that our guests displayed already deserves a pat on he back…but add to that the creativity that was fished drudgingly from the depths of many a hungover soul and you should be applauding with gusto.

2 days, 10 metres of chicken wire, a week’s worth of newspapers, some hefty dollops of gooey slop and some stubbornly skin-adhesive spray paint – and you have a dozen mushrooms and a cheshire cat. and that is before you even start thinking about concocting the mountains of food my angelic mother magically produced!

as is the case with all the best bacchic bashes – things start off all lovely and polite and refined, meaning the slippery slope down into wierdly wonderful drunken tomfoolery is a steep and rapid gauntlet – some time between the DJ’s last song and the last man abandoning his standing position…things all got a little bit, well, for want of a better word, strange.