I've often said with some bitterness that I was never really invited to the 15 year old snog parties that all my peers attended, those drunken house parties where clueless teenagers lost their cherries or at least bragged about it on monday morning.
As a teenager I was not exactly introverted but generally prefered the company of my rescue dog, Ben or that of older people than the company of my own age group and hence weekends would be spent either in my mums shop or endlessly walking my beloved dog while everyone else tried to get drunk and shagged.
Today I think I finally laid the bitterness to rest. I was always bitter not because I wanted particularly to go to these parties just that I would have liked to have been invited to them just to kknow where they are and to see what happened, and in a way to have been accepted into the so-called "cool" circle.
But I was never cool, I was and remain an observer to the standard social structure, but as I've grown wiser I realise that really that is where I belong, and I no longer wish to be involved with the standard wetherspoons drinkers.
Today I went to 2 house parties.
The first was with my carnival family, the Yaa, who I have spent most of the last 2 months with eating, sleeping, breathing and living carnival. It was round at "Auntie" Merle's house and everyone brought a dish or some drinks. It was brilliant.
It was more like a famiily gathering than a house party per se, with a mix of ages from 7 to 70 and everyone was comfortable in each others presence with no frontin' or pretension. Barbequed jerk chicken and soca music among friends and I felt honoured to be part of the Yaa family.
Louisa (or Tim as we called her) invited me to another that same day and I figured I had nothing to lose. So I went round to this house in Hammersmith full of under 25s drinking and standing in corridors, realised it was gonna be shit, stayed 5 minutes, found out it was shit and left.
So to all my peers back in school, all is forgiven. I'm now glad that I never got invited to these and hope no-onw ever invites me to this sort of crap again.
