It's Anne's 30th birthday on Monday and, while high from kayaking last week, I suggested that we throw her a party at our flat because her and Megan's is so tiny.
Anne was very grateful for the offer and we were happy to oblige, until Anne copied us into the invitation email that she sent to about 50 people! We've spent all week persuading ourselves that her friends are likely to be very nice and that our flat isn't going to get trashed, but it's weird to think of the place being overrun by quite so many strangers.
Anyway, the day came yesterday and I spent the whole day preparing for the fiesta. I was thrilled to discover that the eery similarities between me and Anne extend to her penchant for lists and we had an excellent time in the morning, drawing up a list of everything that needed to be done and who was to do it.
It was obvious that this was going to be a far more sophisticated affair than our party, where 
pizza and potato salad was the fanciest fare we served up. There was a cheeseboard, for a start. I took responsibility for the feta/watermelon/olive cocktail sticks (that ended up looking really good. In the words of R Kelly's 'Ignition' - there was food everywhere, just like the party was catered), the veggie sticks and dips and some secret things Anne didn't know about, including rice krispy marshmallow treats and brownies (hey, if it ain't broke...), on top of which I stuck the 3 and 0 candles from Max's party, by way of a surprise birthday cake.
I also decided to make Anne a birthday banner, but there's a real dearth of art shops around here and I was a little stumped as to where to find coloured card and paper. I had to improvise and my banner, which was going to be individual letters strung along a piece of string, became a poster, using ingenious pre-cut letters that are like postits.
To jazz things up a bit, I got some glitter and then set to work in the big hallway of our flat, putting the whole thing together. I decided to use the glitter as a border, so merrily sprinkled glitter down one side of the paper, only to discover by the time I'd done that and funnelled the rest back into the pot that there was no way, with the foolishly wide border I'd gone for, that the glitter would stretch to all four sides. So I ended up, in a sweaty mess of glue, newspaper, glitter and a painy back from bending down so long, with different coloured glitter along two of the sides. It didn't look great, I'll be honest. A little like a 6-year old who's bad at art swung by and had a go at a birthday poster.
Anyway, there wasn't time to brood - there was baking to be done, the flat to be cleaned and an impulsively-booked hairdressers appointment to get to. Who doesn't book themselves into a hairdresser an hour before a party they have to spend all day preparing for?!
This was the first haircut I've had since getting here and it was long overdue. Before leaving London, I asked my hairdresser for a really sustainable cut, half thinking I could get away with not cutting it again until I go home. But his very last snip was to cut off half my fringe and my hair's been all wonky ever since.
So I ventured to a salon recommended by Alison. No-one else here has short hair - all the girls have long flowing styles, so I didn't know if the stylist I went for would be able to handle short, frizzy hair, if she's used to hair like Alison's. Turns out I was at completely the wrong branch for Alison's stylist but got a girl called Barbara who has the exact haircut I dream of - all short and elfin and cool - and massive black tattoos down her arms of the Vidal Sassoon bob. Weird. Turns out she trained at Vidal Sassoon in London.
Barbara's really cool - like a tiny haircutting elf with dramatically short hair and dark eye makeup. She was reeeally slow cutting my hair - cue frenzied texts to Anne and Max - but gave me good tips for our trip to Baltimore in a couple of weeks, so that's good.
What was far from good was the torrential rain which started halfway through our session. Massive sploshy biblical rain. I didn't fancy my chances, getting home with new hair on my bike from downtown.
But the cut looked wooooonderful. I was so happy. Turns out Barbara is very much the tortoise to my London hairdresser's hare, as slow and steady certainly did win the race this time and I'm only sad my hair will never look like that again, once I wash it for the first time.
The rain had stopped by the time I left the salon, but I dashed into CVS to grab an ugly-but-cheap baseball cap just in case and tore home to do final preparations for the party. I love the bit where you get to open all the packets and lie everything out on tables, after preparing stuff for a party all day.
The flat looked great, Anne loved the remedial banner and my new dress looked pretty, 
so all was good with the world. We weren't inundated with 50 of Anne's friends in the end - more like 15-20 or so. Max and I had a really nice time, being the hosts but not having to care if the right people were speaking to each other or if certain people hadn't turned up. We met a couple of Anne's friends called Derek and Sarah who Anne had been wanting us to meet for ages, as she thought we'd get on. Sure enough, they were both really nice and Sarah used to be a cartographer, which is cool - I've never met a cartographer before.
Anne really liked the playlist I'd crafted* for her (* = cribbed from the one for our party) and we all had fun with the ringpops and loomy necklaces Anne had scattered around the place, to give a retro feel as she turned 30. I met Fiona - her nemesis who's one of Hugh's oldest friends and is jealously mean to any girl who gets closer to Hugh than she is - and sure enough she's horrid. I also met a nice chap from the Wall Street Journal, who is one of Megan's oldest friends, and got to speak more to Megan's boyfriend (and Josh Groban lookalike) Jonathan, who seems great.
Megan did a nice speech (well she is a speech-writer, so you'd hope...), mentioning how she and Anne used to pretend they were at boarding school when they were little and gave themselves fancy names - I blew their MINDS when I told them I actually went to boarding school. And Megan told a story about how Anne used to pretend she was a librarian and all the books at their summer house still have Anne's little library stickers in the front. She really is a girl after my own heart! I used to be obsessed with wanting to be a librarian who stamped the books and took the little card out of the pouch in the front.
Anne was really happy with her birthday brownies, as turns out she really doesn't like cake. Phew! It was lovely - she just seemed really relaxed and happy to enjoy her friends and party while not having to worry about her apartment.
Max - looking unfeasibly handsome in his Lucky Brand jeans and t-shirt underneath the shirt he got at Banana Republic the other day - was a hit as ever and spearheaded a small dancing effort towards the end of the evening, which is most unlike him.
Unfortunately we got stuck with just Hugh's boring old friends by the end of the party, around 1.30am, who just sat around going, 'do you remember when MTV started?' and other things which anyone under 40 was unable to relate to. Snooore. Eventually they got the hint as Max and I went into the weird turbo cleanup drive that overcomes us at the end of parties and they all left.
Click HERE for more photos of the night. There were many more people here than are in the pictures, but I didn't know any of them, so these are mostly of Anne, Hugh, Megan, Jonathan, Max and me.
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