caught by the fuzz while we were still on the buzz

Well, an era ended last Saturday night. I was involved in organising the last big shared-house party that I’m ever likely to be involved in organising, what with having moved in with Georgie. It was the 5^th one since I moved to Brighton and the most bonkers by far. Indeed, if the relative bonkersness and full-on-ness were mapped on a graph against years of party throwing… well, it would be a boring graph. But my point is that, over the years, the parties have got steadily more full on and more bonkers. I suspect a similar, sister graph (sibling graph, lets not be sexualist) could be drawn up to show relative levels of drug consumption amongst revellers over the years, and that interesting correlations could observed between the two.

This is getting abstract. Enough with the graphs.

So, myself and Phil were honorary housemates for the sake of the night, despite having moved out already. Rodney, Henry and Russ were official housemates but they, too, leave before the month is out. Hence the party was a house cooling affair as well as marking my then-upcoming / now-just-gone birthday. With help from the regular and reliable motley cru of expert setter upperers, the house was decked out with gusto, gumption and a good dose of stress over the course of Friday and Saturday. Then came the masses.

It was a late bloomer, perhaps filling out between 12 and 2. People danced, people talked, people met, people daubed random nonsense on the graffitti wall (many sheets of white paper, highlighter pens and a UV striplight to illuminate the creativity that flowed forth). People ingested that which floated their boat, and their boats floated. The police arrived.

*car skidding sound effect* (representing my sudden and instantaneous return to sobriety)

Yes, the fucking police arrived. Despite the fact that several people were at hand, being the only housemate present, honorary or otherwise, I proceeded to take responsibility for the proceedings, which was fair enough. I had to escort the buggers (a young man and a small woman who Rodney described as a ‘terrier’ due to her fiestyness) around the various rooms of the party wishing that people would stop acting like fucking idiots and spouting insults and nonsense so I could get the police officers out of my party without incident. Which I almost managed – indeed, they’d stopped shining their torches in peoples eyes, they’d warned me about the noise, said they’d be in the area all night and that we’d better pipe down soonish, and they were heading to the front door. Then they noticed the crowd in Russels room.

A crowd which included Russels mate, who was in the process of giving someone a pill. A crowd which also included a girl who kicked off big time and acted like, for want of a better phrase, a complete cunt. To top it all, nobody knew her. Russels mate went without hassle, knowing what was good for him. The girl went down with a torrent of “fuck you”, “get the fuck off me”, “say please or I’m not doing anything”, and finally “ooh, I love it when you do that” when they had to resort to cuffing her. Her brother was on hand adding useful comments like “Is this why you became a copper mate? Well done. Well done”. What was he expecting? A sudden realisation on the part of said PC that his working life had been a waste of time and that he’d been blindly serving a melevolant higher power that he didn’t agree with or understand? For fucks sake.

Despite the arrests, it remained a wicked party and I think everyone had a good time. I remained in a state of wired sober fuckedness, if you can imagine such a thing. It was actually quite pleasant! Proceedings rolled on until the upstairs neighbour understandably requested that we shut up at about 7:30am. “It is the Sabbath, after all”, he said. Good point. Personally, I enjoyed having a clean, empty flat to escape to once my honourary housemate duties were done (and exceeded, I feel!)

So what do I make of the police’s presence and attitude? Well, they had a noise complaint so they had to check it out. Fair enough, it was a fucking loud and busy party. Once inside, they encountered drug use, so again they had to deal with it. The fact that they insisted on entering the house was the only slightly questionable action in my opinion. Someone suggested that perhaps they were looking for someone inparticular – a local chavvy car thief or something – and they wondered if he’d gatecrashed (cos god knows, there were a lot of gatecrashers present!). Maybe that was the case. Either way, they were doing their job. Yes, they’d be better off making sure people weren’t being mugged, robbed or assaulted, but that’s a gripe with the institution, not the individual officers. Most of the folks who didn’t have to deal with the practicalities of a police presense at their party failed to grasp this point, though, and considered it fair game to splurge forth misjudged, unstructured and unhelpful abuse while I (and others) struggled to keep the situation under control and keep the party going on.

Still, it’s all good fun innit!