Luke's 18th birthday party

Busy, busy, busy today getting things ready for Luke's party tonight. To be fair I am not cooking, I have someone doing that for us so I am really just faffing about with silly things. He has twelve friends arriving at 7pm and the evening will kick off with drinks - the family will join Luke and his friends for a glass of bubbly.

Then the boys are sitting down to a formal 3 course dinner - they are eating in another room, the family will let them get on with it while we eat in the kitchen. Then at 10.30pm they are going up to London to a night club on the Kings Road where they are meeting the girls (yippee, 18 at least and using legal ID for the first time!!) We have arranged a mini bus pick-up at 2.30am (no trains running at that time of night) and will all come back here to sleep, and I have stocked up on food for breakfast for tomorrow morning.

The air beds have been blown up, the drinks have been purchased (forgot one thing so have to go out for the third time today to get it) and I have set the table - simple white table cloth with these white tulips and a row of tea lights running down the middle of the table - all suitably masculine, nothing too flowery. I had to whiten the table cloth in this image as despite ironing it over and over you can still see the creases.

Now we look forward to welcoming the boys tonight - such a lovely bunch they are, well mannered, intelligent, charming, all bright young things on the threshold of adult life as they head off to university/gap years in the autumn.