Bridget McNulty

The Importance of Celebrating (and tea parties).

// August 25th, 2007 // Strange Nervous Laughter, Tea Parties

I’m sending out a call for more celebrating.
I just went to my first baby shower (I don’t feel broody) and it was just wonderful – a whole group of women joining together to celebrate a friend’s impending motherhood, offering advice and gifts and cupcakes. I think so often we get caught up in the delirium of everyday living that we forget to stop and celebrate, even if it’s just the little things.
I’m just as much to blame here – my best friend in America asked me what I’m going to do to celebrate when Strange Nervous Laughter hits the shelves and I was like, “What? Celebrate? I haven’t even thought about celebrating! I’ve got too much to DO before then!”
I’m moving into a garden cottage in a month, and as a housewarming I’m having a garden tea party (I absolutely love baking). I want there to be tea cups and fun serviettes and a table just groaning with chocolate cake and fairy cakes and biscuits and little sandwiches without their crusts and maybe even a few scones. I love the idea of congregating around tea – when I did the proofread of Strange Nervous Laughter I was kind of astounded by how many references to tea I made! Clearly it’s one of the glues holding me together. But more on that later.

What I would love to see is a resurgence in tea parties. A writer called Kate Jacobs wrote ‘The Friday Night Knitting Club’ and apparently it ignited women all over the USA to start Friday Night Knitting Clubs! I love that! So what I want to do is reignite celebrating, with a resurgence of tea parties. Give me some time and I’ll put together the definitive Tea Party guide as a download on www.bridgetmcnulty.com

For now, though, I need some ideas for how to celebrate my book being in bookstores, cause all of a sudden it’s drawing frighteningly close!
Anyone?