We park the car outside our friend's house and can already see them through the window. They're everywhere.

Kids. Toddlers. Babies. Scampering about. Pushing each other over. Wiping food into the carpets. Blaming each other for minor misdemeanours and then bursting into tears.

'Remember!' says my wife, her finger in the air.

'I'll be fine!' I say, closing my eyes and nodding in the way I've seen people do on TV when they're trying to be comforting.

And then we ring the doorbell.

While we're waiting for someone to answer, I may as well tell you the little thing that happened, a couple of years before, at a party at the same house - though you should stop me if you've heard it.

We'd been in the garden, and I'd looked down to see a small boy kicking my shins. He was persistent and showed a keen talent for it, but after a while enough was enough. I found a piece of paper and wrote out a note I asked him to give to his father, who was getting gently sozzled nearby. The little boy had obliged and handed his dad the note. It was then that I realised this was probably a bad idea. His dad, now no longer merely gently sozzled, appeared to forget his son did not yet possess the ability to write, and genuinely seemed to believe he'd managed to scrawl 'I am pissed off my tiny tits' himself. Now the angry father wanted to know who'd apparently been feeding his child alcohol. He soon decided it was me. I learned that night what it is to cause a scene, and have never again implied a child is high on booze.

'Hello!' says our friend, answering the door. 'Come in!'

We do as she says and are soon sitting at her table, the smell of good food around us, laughter everywhere. But no kids, all of a sudden.

'Where are all the children?' asks one of our fellow guests, concerned for her four-year-old.

'I think they're in the upstairs loo,' I say, smiling, and then I freeze.

Stop.

Stop.

I take a deep breath. I'd been about to say, 'I think they're in the upstairs loo, having a fag out the window.'

But why? Why had I thought that would be a good thing to say? It was not a good thing to say! Still, I'd managed to stop myself - that was me remembering to be on my best behaviour!

And then my wife kicks me under the table, gently, because as it turns out, 'I think they're in the upstairs loo' is still a very odd thing to say when you don't then explain why you've said it.

I take a sip of my wine as the lady fakes an uncomfortable ha-ha, pretends to relax, and then gets up and jogs for the stairs. My wife shoots me a look, and I lean over.