‘I’ve agreed to host the family shindig – thereby accepting the inevitable destruction of our house’

I adore such shindigs, to be clear. They are, quite simply, the best possible way to get drunk with people you love and still enjoy the dilution of parental responsibility that comes from large family gatherings. A natural order descends upon the assembled nephews and nieces that means any bump on the head or lightly mangled leg will be witnessed and reported by as many as 20 breathless children – a sort of Stasi-esque daycare/surveillance system. One that comes with just one significant cost: in their free-roaming leisure, said children will destroy your home, conducting bafflingly abstruse games that involve them running at full pelt through every room for the entire day.

I have avoided this happening in my home, due to a secondary joy of big family dynamics, namely, the hierarchy between my own siblings. The fact is, I am never called upon to host simply because I am the ninth of 11 kids. As a “wee one”, it doesn’t matter that I am nearing 40. Nor that I have two kids myself and a slight – one might say dashing – sprinkle of salty white hair about my temples. No, in the eyes of my elder siblings, I am little more than a child. Asking me to host would be like nominating my three-year-old daughter to be their doula, or calculate their taxes: a request so absurd it’s practically adorable.

The first tremors that I’d be breaking this duck came on Wednesday, when my sister, Maeve, revealed that my brother-in-law, Jimmy, was unwell. By Saturday, the day before the event in question, he announced he would not be able to host. This was disconcerting for two reasons. First, we love Jimmy and consider any thought of his ill-health distressing. This lasted, oh, 18 seconds before we realised an alternative destination would now be necessary, at which point my troubles really began.

In the group chat, my noble big brother, Dara, kindly suggested his house, with the caveat that they are having significant work done, most of the loft is currently in their kitchen and the entire place is basically a building site. I buffered for a moment, wondering if I could suggest he bung his tradesman a few extra quid to put on waiter’s garb and cater the event. We could simply instruct our kids to avoid any holes in the walls that gave off sparks or smoke.

A glance from my wife suggested this was not tenable. So, with trembling heart, I suggested we host instead. The group chat rejoiced, distributing approvals so immediate it made me wonder if my years’ long avoidance of such labours had gone as unnoticed as I’d thought. And so we found ourselves up at the crack of dawn, kids glued to screens while we prepared enough food to fuel the coming demolition of our property.

Our guests arrived soon enough with their own contributions, doubling the feast on offer while providing enough booze to feed the siege of Stalingrad. The kids bounded off to play together and only crossed our paths for the next eight hours as mottled gusts of wind, a Bash Street Kids-style child-mass of arms and legs streaming past us on their inscrutable itinerary.

Previously, I’ve found their passion for destruction quite charming. It’s easy to be the fun uncle when not on home turf. “Kids will be kids!” I would say, handing them markers, hammers or bleach from hard-to-reach cabinets, tousling their hair as they pulled up floorboards or sawed at each other’s necks with piano wire.

Now that they were running through my own home – a sacred place where people actually live – I found myself shooing them from sharp or dirty objects and insisting, responsibly, that if they must practise diving from the top bunk, they should at least remove those pillows and cushions from the floor where they might get ruined.

Downstairs, we adults caught up and caroused, making a sizeable dent in the food and demolishing the booze entirely. A few hours in, sing-songs were embraced with typically Irish enthusiasm. In that way of Bluetooth speakers, we’re forced to steadily increase their volume throughout the evening, until it’s only possible to be heard over Joni Mitchell or Celine Dion by singing at the sort of volume used in CIA blacksites.

By 10.30pm, stuffed with late-night cheese and bleary from booze, we gathered ourselves for goodbyes. Those kids not attached to us, asleep, were rounded up, assessed for physical damage and shuffled out, wailing like press-ganged sailors headed for war. As the last of our guests exited, we surveyed the damage. A novel new odour – chicken prosecco stilton – announced itself from every surface in the kitchen, which teemed with paper plates, wooden forks and an egg cup filled with white wine. There was glass on the floor and stainson the walls so thick we feared they might be load-bearing. The upstairs bedrooms looked as if they’d been nuked from orbit and the bottom half of our shed door was missing. It was, in short, a triumph: 10/10. Would never host again.