We live in the leafy suburbs of North-west London. Nothing ever happens here. Its sleepy. Genteel. Peaceful. ‘Excitement’ round our way is when your ‘Ring’ doorbell drops off the WiFi. ‘Living on the edge’ is what we call driving round in a dirty car. And by ‘dirty’, that means either covered in muck, or powered by oil derivatives.

But that doesn’t mean we don’t know how to PARTYYYYYY!!!!

Oh yes, every time there’s a coronation, or a jubilee, we close off our tiny little street, block off the ends with cones, set up half a dozen trestle tables and, the defining item for any true party; we get a bouncy castle!!! The rule is simple: no bouncy castle, it ain’t no party. There are NO exceptions. You can get the sound system from Berghain, have Paul McCartney and Bruce Springsteen to share the DJing, line up the trestle tables with cocaine (rather than red, white and blue cup cakes), open 17 bottles of premium vodka and 14 canisters of laughing gas and then have a surprise performance by Jay-Z. But if there was no bouncy castle, it wouldn’t be a party.

The funny thing is; we have zero bouncy castle aged kids on our street. We have teens, we have grown ups and we have 2 tiny babies. I was obviously going to import a couple of ringers, but even before Lila and Joey arrived, ‘word got round’. Kids from adjacent streets, fucking free-loading on MY bouncy castle!!! I went out with my baseball bat but was told such things were acceptable for a street party. It was a wild afternoon.

Then later we had… The Concert!!! The Coronation one. Windsor Castle (not bouncy). And it was great. Lionel Richie was there, sounded the same but looked like he’s borrowed someone else’s face for the evening. But then ‘the stars of the show’: (what’s left of) Take That!!! (after Robbie Williams left). Well, you can’t get star-ier than three-quarters of shit, manufactured, tv-show boy-band, can you!!!! They were brilliant! Gary Barlow sounded… of something, Mark Owen… hmmm… other bloke… ok, so they have no power to any of their vocals whatsoever, but they’re really… errrr… good at… they… Ok, then I get why that was ‘their first performance for 4 years!!!!’

Welcome to the Carolean Era. WTF???

A xxxx