Easy Socialising

This weekend I invited over a bunch of our old university buddies, and it was great.

We still didn’t feel up to a repeat of the bigger summer party we held the year before last, but we love our Abnib buddies, so put the call out to say: hey, come on over, bring a tent (or be willing to crash on a sofa bed) if you want to stay over; we’ll let the kids run themselves ragged with a water fight and cricket and football and other garden games, then put them in front of a film or two while we hang out and drink and play board games or something.

14 adults, 8 children, and a dog stand on/in front of a garden climbing frame: Dan is in the centre. — Every one of these people is awesome. Or else a dog.

The entire plan was deliberately low-effort. Drinks? We had a local brewery drop us off a couple of kegs, and encouraged people to BYOB. Food? We threw a stack of pre-assembled snacks onto a table, and later in the day I rotated a dozen or so chilled pizzas through the oven. Entertainments? Give the kids a pile of toys and the adults one another’s company.

We didn’t even do more than the bare minimum of tidying up the place before people arrived. Washing-up done? No major trip hazards on the floor? That’s plenty good enough!

A man wearing a cap pours himself a beer from a 10-litre box. — The intersection of “BYOB” and the generosity of our friends somehow meant that, I reckon, we have more alcohol in the house now than *before* the party!

I found myself recalling our university days, when low-effort ad-hoc socialising seemed… easy. We lived close together and we had uncomplicated schedules, which combined to make it socially-acceptable to “just turn up” into one another’s lives and spaces. Many were the times that people would descend upon Claire and I’s house in anticipation that there’d probably be a film night later, for example¹.

I remember one occasion a couple of decades ago, chilling with friends². Somebody – possibly Liz – commented that it’d be great if in the years to come our kids would be able to be friends with one another. I was reminded of it when our eldest asked me, of our weekend guests, “why are all of your friends’ children are so great?”

A group of adults stand around on a patio, socialising. — It’s not *the same* as those days long ago, but I’m not sure I’d want it to be. It is, however, fantastic.

What pleased me in particular was how relatively-effortless it was for us all to slip back into casually spending time together. With a group of folks who have, for the most part, all known each other for over two decades, even not seeing one another in-person for a couple of years didn’t make a significant dent on our ability to find joy in each other’s company.

Plus, being composed of such laid-back folks, it didn’t feel awkward that we had, let’s face it, half-arsed the party. Minimal effort was the order of the day, but the flipside of that was that the value-for-effort coefficient was pretty-well optimised³.

A delightful weekend that I was glad to be part of.

¹ That Claire and I hosted so many social events, both regular and unplanned, eventually lead us to the point that it was the kind of thing we considered whenever we moved house!

² Perhaps at the Ship & Castle, where we spent a reasonable amount of our education.

³ I’m pretty sure that if I’d have used the term “value-for-effort coefficient” at the party, though, then it’d have immediately sucked 100% of the fun out of the room.