You've got a friend

Posted by Lucy Robinson at 16:50 on 22 Mar 2010

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I started a blog on Saturday that opened with this rather dramatic (and of course completely untrue) statement: "The day of your  30th birthday party is one of the worst days of your life."

The blog (which I later deleted in a wave of drunken exuberance) was about the way that you pass through your party day in a state of morbid terror; convinced that no one will turn up and that your parents will think you're a complete loser.

By 3pm I was blogging hysterically again; one eye on my laptop and the other on my phone, waiting for those BLOODY text messages to start arriving - the ones saying stuff like "oh blah blah blah, I hurt my hand, blah blah I got stuck in on the M4, blah blah blah...

WHATEVER, I wrote in my mad angry petrified blog. WHATEVER, DO YOU HEAR ME? IT IS MY THIRTIETH BIRTHDAY AND SHORT OF A NUCLEAR FALLOUT I CANNOT ENVISAGE AN EXCUSE FOR YOU NOT BEING THERE. AND JUST RIGHT NOW I DON'T CARE HOW UNREASONABLE THAT SOUNDS.  CAN'T YOU UNDERSTAND? I AM HAVING THE WORST DAY OF MY YEAR. I AM BEING MENTAL AND TERRIFIED. I AM A MONSTER.

(NB If you are the friend who called me at 6.30pm from your local tube station, actually crying because you are so ill that you passed out during your brave attempt to reach my party, then you should know that I did not react like the above to your phone call.)

But back to the mad pre-party blog. As I started on a furious polemic about the psychological damage caused by parties and how I would NEVER (do you hear me? NEVER! NEVERRRRRRR.) have a party again, my two best friends from home arrived. I knew this because I heard the sound of witch-like shrieking and the clinking of bottles in the street accompanied by demonic cackles and a lot of loud swearing.

We got on the champagne immediately. "So who's cancelled then?" they asked, after I announced that I was primed, phone angrily in hand, for further cancellations. "er, well, no one really," I replied. They laughed in my face and poured more champagne.

And miraculously, just like that, I calmed the hell down. Hours before my birthday party even started! It felt amazing. I highly recommend Calming Down if you can wangle it on your party day. The secret is simple: don't go it alone. Make contact with other human beings who care about you - their mere presence will remind you that you are loved.  Easy.

A good party is a good party so I won't go into the details but I will say - boastfully but truthfully - that it was a BLOODY TRIUMPH. There was a lot of laughter, a lot of dancing, far too much boozing and, indeed, an unexpected catwalk show. There was even a Dale Winton's Supermarket Sweep sweatshirt and two of my friends copped off with each other. My parents went down a storm and my sister and her boyfriend knocked out bangers from the decks all night. (by decks I mean ipod dock.) It was immense.

Thanks, dearest friends and fam. You reprazent. And I am one lucky girl.

Lucy Robinson
Aged 30

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