Aftermath

This was not a great place to wake up in this morning! The clean-up might conceivably consume more hours than the preparation.... and that was a lot!!

The kitchen is particularly horrendous. The great comedy moment of the evening came when a lady turned up to read the water-meter under the sink.... and retreated in horror. Some people ignored that warning notice on the kitchen door; I was not amused; if their bodies are dredged out of the river next week, it's nothing to do with me.

Final facts & figures:

Well, fully one third of the expected guests failed to appear because of illness, last-minute 'work commitments'.... or just deterred from venturing out of their homes by the bad weather (rained all day, snowed around midnight!), but there were quite a few unannounced drop-ins (Martina, where have you been for the last two years?!)...... so the final headcount was around 50.

Consumed: 8.5 bottles of rum, 4 bottles of wine (who was drinking wine??), approximately 200 bottles/cans of beer..... and two cups of tea (David, Lydia, I hope you appreciated them - that was almost more trouble than everything else put together!). Quite a modest drinking spree, really! I still have an unreasonably large quantity of beer in my bath, as you can see in the picture above. Looks like I picked the wrong month to give up drinking.

Oh well, I'd better stop procrastinating and start tidying.....