| EASY SOCIALISING
2024-08-20
This weekend I invited over a bunch of our old university buddies, and it was
great.
We still didn't feel up to a repeat of the bigger summer party we held the
year before last, but we love our Abnib buddies, so put the call out to say:
hey, come on over, bring a tent (or be willing to crash on a sofa bed) if you
want to stay over; we'll let the kids run themselves ragged with a water fight
and cricket and football and other garden games, then put them in front of a
film or two while we hang out and drink and play board games or something.
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The entire plan was deliberately low-effort. Drinks? We had a local brewery
drop us off a couple of kegs, and encouraged people to BYOB. Food? We threw a
stack of pre-assembled snacks onto a table, and later in the day I rotated a
dozen or so chilled pizzas through the oven. Entertainments? Give the kids a
pile of toys and the adults one another's company.
We didn't even do more than the bare minimum of tidying up the place before
people arrived. Washing-up done? No major trip hazards on the floor? That's
plenty good enough!
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I found myself recalling our university days, when low-effort ad-hoc
socialising seemed... easy. We lived close together and we had uncomplicated
schedules, which combined to make it socially-acceptable to "just turn up"
into one another's lives and spaces. Many were the times that people would
descend upon Claire and I's house in anticipation that there'd probably be a
film night later, for example (That Claire and I hosted so many social events,
both regular and unplanned, eventually lead us to the point that it was the
kind of thing we considered whenever we moved house!).
I remember one occasion a couple of decades ago, chilling with friends
(Perhaps at the Ship & Castle, where we spent a reasonable amount of our
education.). Somebody - possibly Liz - commented that it'd be great if in the
years to come our kids would be able to be friends with one another. I was
reminded of it when our eldest asked me, of our weekend guests, "why are all
of your friends' children are so great?"
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What pleased me in particular was how relatively-effortless it was for us all
to slip back into casually spending time together. With a group of folks who
have, for the most part, all known each other for over two decades, even not
seeing one another in-person for a couple of years didn't make a significant
dent on our ability to find joy in each other's company.
Plus, being composed of such laid-back folks, it didn't feel awkward that we
had, let's face it, half-arsed the party. Minimal effort was the order of the
day, but the flipside of that was that the value-for-effort coefficient was
pretty-well optimised (I'm pretty sure that if I'd have used the term
"value-for-effort coefficient" at the party, though, then it'd have
immediately sucked 100% of the fun out of the room.).
A delightful weekend that I was glad to be part of.
LINKS
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| I invited over a bunch of our old university buddies |
| Bigger summer party |
| Abnib |
| A local brewery |
| Make it socially-acceptable to "just turn up" |
| It was the kind of thing we considered whenever we moved house |
| At the Ship & Castle, where we spent a reasonable amount of our education |
| Liz |