The Street Barbecue 2007

We were introduced to the concept of the "street barbecue" on the day of our very first sight of our new house. We came round to view it for the first time in June last year on the day of the party, when our "vendors" (as we called them then) were preparing salmon steaks as their contribution to the communal nose bag.

A year later, here we are in the middle of this community, and now it's our street party too. Our neighbours opposite arrange the hire of a bouncy castle for the kids, everyone brings chairs, tables, barbecues and food, and we all have a great time. In defiance of the weather, it has to be said, which despite being extremely wet for most of the week leading up to the party, managed to hold off until early evening and allow us some time in the garden.

Here we are, having already consumed copious quantities of kebabs, burgers, samosas and salads, having a go at "Play Your Cards Right" (some readers may have to Google that to understand the concept). Men vs women, and I'm happy to report that the men won 5-nil. ;o) After that we had a three-legged race (I found my niche as a course marshall, standing behind the bouncy castle to make sure no-one took a short cut) and pretty soon after that we all had to head indoors as the first of several cloudbursts hit.

We'd managed to arrange things so the party coincided with a "girls' weekend" and it was great to engage in the community with them around too. One of the most unusual and gratifying aspects of this group of friends is how all age groups come together and enjoy the occasion. Even the teenage lads, who are usually notorious for a "Kevin the Teenager" attitude to family or neighbourly social interactions, took part in great spirit.

Having exhausted the list of outdoor recreations, our hosts proceeded to whip us into several indoor games, the first of which was a hilarious romp called, simply, Animals. A simple idea - the names of animals are written in pairs on small pieces of paper. There were 28 of us playing, so 28 pieces of paper; 14 animals. Everyone stands around in a circle and the gamesmaster throws the papers into the middle. There's a massive scrabble for the papers and, once you've retrieved one and found out which animal you're supposed to be, you start making the noise of that animal and searching out your partner who's making the same noise. Once you're paired, you sit down. The last pair standing are out.

Sounds simple, but it's as mad as a bag of frogs and great fun. Scrambling through a crowd of people ranging in ages from eight to eighty, shouting "oink" or "hissss" or "moooo" and listening for the one other person in the crowd who is also shouting "oink" or "hissss" or "moooo" is not as easy as it sounds. Not to mention the fact that you might be oinking while your partner is grunting. Things got off to an unfortunate start when the organisers forgot to take the paired papers of the losing couple out of the game, so in the second round we were left with two papers on the floor and an unpaired couple bleating and growling their way around the room. This was soon resolved however, and the game continued at a mad pace. Hilarity reached a peak when, halfway through the game, the last couple standing were making different noises even though the papers were correctly paired. They both had "monkey," but only one was going "ook, ook." The other was shouting "hee-haw" for all she was worth, having misread the paper as "donkey."

Around 10.30 Annie fired up the karaoke (by special request, it having been such a hit at our housewarming) and we carried on singing for most of the rest of the night, with two short interruptions for more games. The girls gave up shortly after midnight, Nikki left me to it at 2.20am, but us stalwarts (Annie, myself and four other guests) continued blasting out the old favourite tunes until 3.30am. What a great party. And we get the chance to do it all again next year!