Mixing up generations brought sun to our party

LAST weekend, Martha and Sam turned 18 and we hosted one hell of a party. It was the best since Jeremy Bowen – the BBC’s Middle East Editor – invited me to his leaving party in London before he moved to Jerusalem in 1996, which was where I met my wife.

But back then I had a Chelsea bachelor pad and Jeremy drove an Alfa Romeo Spider – things have changed. In those days, the promise of a party meant far more than vintage wine and reminiscent chatter. Now, you want happy faces and laughter, but something more, too. A sense – forgive me if I sound pretentious – of something holistic. Something into which everyone fits.

We opted for a ‘multi-generational’ party to which we invited Martha and

IT’S A SORT OF THERAPY PROVIDED BY LOVE AND JOKES

Sam’s grandparents; a handful of their teenage friends and their fiftysomething parents, family friends whom we have known for years and their eight- and nine-year-old children, and several neighbours – all of varying ages. In total, we welcomed about 50 people into our South London home and it was fantastic.

Humans are designed to live among each other – not just with friends and neighbours in similar stages of life, but in a real, proper mix. In an age of anxious youngsters (recent reports show that children as young as four have mental-health issues) and chronically lonely older people, this is surely part of the solution. A sort of therapy provided by love and shared jokes.

We topped the whole thing off with a short film we made ourselves (filmed on phones) in which we asked a range of those there to mime the words to the opening song of the film La La Land, Another Day Of Sun. It was a thing of magic, watching grandparents and grandchildren miming the same joyous words as we foot-tapped along. Luckily, I’ve got a good video editor in the family (Sam, who is about to study creative writing at university, knows a thing or two about this stuff).

We live in a society where young and old do too little together. Other cultures manage it: we need to mix up the generations. It would ultimately lift the stress among the young and the old.