Party 1

No pics yet (apart from below. self-inflicted) as I'm trying unsuccessfully to learn Heart of Glass; I will have to have the words there tomorrow. Great party though! The Offsprogs had a bake-off and a Johnny Depp cake vied with a portrait of Offsprog One by Offsprog Two.
Minnie Mouse met a chicken, a tiger, a sheep, a peacock, two zebras, a ladybird, a caterpillar, a bee, a panda, a lion, two donkeys, a budgie and Michael Jackson.
The budgie was terrifying and hilarious at the same time. It was the build-up that did it; the older of my two younger brothers, Big Bruv, was cooking chicken tikka and kept talking about his budgie costume. Gradually, I began to be convinced that he was fibbing and had made no attempt to make one, hoping that by the time everyone had got drunk everyone would have forgotten and it wouldn't matter.
I had already given him ten-out-of-ten for a good spiel when he disappeared, only to return in the most monstrously pervy creation you could possibly imagine; dripping with strands of bright green ostrich feathers, a zebra-skin neck cowl, yellow cloth wings, a green feather hat, sunglasses and a huge pale blue beak on a strand of elastic.
The nephews-once-removed (four and seven months) opened their mouths in cartoon amazement; McSis snorted with laughter as he explained the ease with which a human could transform himself into a budgie in a matter on minutes. We photographed him in the bushes in his natural habitat.
I laughed so much I cried.
He had ordered six St Patricks Day ostrich feather boas on eBay to create his costume and a zebra print boob-tube to customise for the neck. I can imagine him chortling to himself over the computer as he made his plan, and obviously he could not slave over a hot stove with feather boas fluffing about all over the place.
Wherever he went he left a trail of lime green feathers; they nestled in the grass in the garden and drifted about on the kitchen floor in a vain attempt to find St Patrick.