Toeing the party line

Country house weekends were rambunctious affairs before profligacy was replaced by parenthood, Eve Jones works out how to score points

THERE was a time when weekend house parties were synonymous with fieldsports, nominal yomps to get to a pub, boisterous supper parties, corridor creeping, bed hopping and justly crippling hangovers. Then, suddenly, people started getting married and having babies and before you knew it, the entire dynamic of a weekend away had changed. In one’s early to late twenties, bedhopping scandals were eagerly anticipated. Who would wake up where and with whom? Who’d be caught bonking in the host’s parents’ bed (it wasn’t me guv, honest…) Almost overnight, these weekends morphed into tribal gatherings of young families. Now, corridor creeping is more likely to involve tip-toeing around creaky floorboards to avoid waking the baby.

Singletons have often drawn the bedroom short straw at country house parties, but a box room or makeshift bed was generally recompensed by the fact that after more boisterous dinner parties you might end up sardined with another singleton, brought for your amusement. Now, singles get demoted to study sofas because Baby Oscar’s in the box room and, quite feasibly, may share a bedroom with the baby, monitored all night on a remote computer screen, too scared to fart for fear of waking the child and being recorded doing it. Gone, too, are the days when the gate-crashing overspill were found sleeping in car boots. Now, the working cockers, too much for the in-laws, too numerous for the boot room, commandeer the car boots.

Parental first night exuberance is always extreme; Baby Shark-ed out they’re desperate to let loose. Host generosity is in abundance, team excitement levels are high, new parents harking back to the halcyon days of pre-pregnancy. Wine flows generously, espresso martinis are guzzled and 2am is loudly celebrated for not involving a crappy nappy. Potential hangovers are poopooed because, for a fleeting moment, they are child free and 25 again. Of course, with the finger of a hungry child up Mummy’s nostril at 6.07am on Saturday morning, comes the dawn of reality. Who gets the liein is now the big question.

Mummy is awake. Daddy is awake, too, but feigning sleep. The answer is important because with the mother of all hangovers comes the disappearance of gender-neutral team spirit. In days before children it was

Everyone agrees that naked flaming sambucas and all-nighters are a young man’s game

all for one and one for all, and intravenous wine flowed indiscriminately. Now, there is underlying competition from the beginning of the weekend between the lads and the ladies as to who will look after the children. Team tactics are planned in hushed tones before they’re presented to the opposition and points monitored closely. Who bathed and bottled baby when we arrived? Daddy. Tick. Who made sure the toddler was fed and in bed with a story by 7.30? Mummy. Tick. Who packed for the weekend? Mummy. Tick. Who got up in the night to feed the baby? (Trick question. Singleton roommate.) Night one: Daddy 1, Mummy 2 (Singleton 5).

There may be three or four couples wrangling for points about the house, so the sexes must be fiercely supportive of their own side as the point system is important to earn pub credit. Men, no matter how much of a modern-day father they think themselves to be, have an innate belief that it is their right to be in the pub. Women know the men think this, the men know the women know and are worried the women will try to stop them. The women pretend they don’t want to stop them and passive aggressively suggest the boys enjoy themselves for an hour while the girls look after the children ‘just while baby naps?’ The boys evaluate the snot and squawkery in the house and make a mental note that they will probably stretch to three hours, smile and kiss their partners on the forehead as they leave. The men drink twice as fast as they need to, just in case the women call them back early. The women wouldn’t dream of actually calling them back early but get madder as each hour goes by, popping bottles of remedial champagne. Meanwhile, the singles feel smug about sharing the baby’s bedroom as they won’t face repercussive ice-cold shoulders or a boiling hot bollocking later. Better yet, no one can blame a singleton for joining the pub team; likewise, they gain bonus points for offering to hold, feed or bath the baby. Win-win.

Obviously, when the merry men return, the women are heartily stuck into the bubbles and after a haka-style stand off the daddies sheepishly offer to take the kids up, who, observing Daddy is trying to put a nighty on Baby Edward and baby-grow on three-year-old Isobel, roll their eyes and quietly put themselves to bed.

Amazing what an absorbent kitchen supper and a few bottles of good red wine can do for relations. The boys say the pub was draughty and the barrels needed changing. The women say they had a great afternoon, catching up on the gossip. Collectively, everyone reminisces about the old days and decides that naked flaming sambucas and all-nighters are a young man’s game. Someone suggests a brisk walk with the kids in the morning to blow away cobwebs. Everyone sleeps soundly and leaves only mildly, manageably hungover, tribe in tow, snot germs swapped, comforter disastrously left behind but refreshingly, reassuringly, maturely with the correct knickers on and dignity intact.