Grandmother’s Household Hints for a Successful New Year’s Eve!

With Christmas over you might assume it safe to stick your face back up over the parapet. 

Wrong.

When your finances are at their lowest ebb, and your face and figure are showing the ravages of Asti and chocolates the new year and its attendant horrors sneers at you from the pages of the calendar emblazoned with inspirational quotes that his mother bought  – meaning you can neither throw it in the bin nor deface it horribly. 

However. I digress.

The best advice is to be anywhere but at home. Sadly that isn’t going to happen. And when your dearly beloved suggested inviting a ‘few’ folks around for New Year’s Eve you should really have pinned him down on the word few.

So – you have just discovered that ‘a few folks’ consists of the rugby club, the darts team, his running buddies and most of the local Young Farmers. Unfortunately, this doesn’t constitute grounds for justifiable homicide (or divorce)…

What to do.

After you finish kicking his ass, make him empty the garage and borrow his Aunty Betty’s caravan awning. This party is coming nowhere inside your house. Get straw bales for seating. Hire a couple of horrible portable toilets and some space heaters. Get the ancient ghetto blaster out of the attic. And dress warmly

Catering should be basic.

Booze wise offer only beer. Anybody wanting anything else can effing well buy it themselves.

Food? Tempting though it is to go down the route of crisps, nuts and the sweets nobody likes from the selection boxes this is a dangerous way to go .

Better by far is to construct a huge vat of stew with the leftover turkey and as much root veg as you can blackmail the husband into peeling. Vegetarians can be catered for with a bean pot of equally large proportions. Serve in paper bowls with plastic spoons and huge chunks of bread. 

Job done. Zero washing up and enough stomach lining to prevent alcoholic poisoning, drunken orgiastic behaviour, or the annual drunken brawl…

A final word of warning.

Let nobody in the house or you will discover said person asleep under the stairs on about January 5…