The suggestions are awesome. Thank you for your thoughts.

a) My workmate had fun, I think, she brought another friend of hers along and they were little social bunnies themselves so that was cool

b) A friend I haven't seen in months was there when we arrived and he's very chilled out and it was sooooo good to see him and it was someone i didn't need to make a big social effort with cos it's easy

c) I found a good excuse for not talking all the time in doing stuff like preparing the nibbles and doing the odd little clean up etc. the birthday boy was rather trashed so there was a good excuse to rescue the ciabatta from burning etc.

d) By this time i'd been fed a good many cocktails and was not a sober dsf by any means. The thing about cocktail parties is that there's always someone who likes to play bartender :> and they always want to try out their inventions.

i did make the 'i have to do work tomorrow' excuse but i got convinced to go out to an event anyway where some friends were dj-ing ... it was all in all pretty fun i guess. i got home round 3am so i must have had quite a bit of fun heh.