July 9, 2018
Dear Friends,
Our adventure is now ten years old. Tonight you have come a short distance through our fair city, but a very long distance from this day in 2008 when this party first began. And even those that have been picked up along the way - gloriously, I might add - have come an even more winding path for not knowing what they were really on. It has been a decade since Ursula first ran in front of the camera in the middle of Bedford Street. She was nearly a year and a half old.
As life passes there is no one to mark the time but ourselves. Ten years ago it seemed wise to use this birthday moment to document life and capture time as well as the smiles with which you all have surrounded me. And what a success it has been! Despite every attempt of our culture to ruin things by continually trying to convince us that life was never better than when we were forever twenty one.
I would like to thank each and every one of you for being here tonight. You have all been brilliant since your arrival - all but the small handful whose questionable sense of humor and loud voices have threatened to get us all thrown out of this extremely stylish establishment.
I should also like to say, on a personal note, that it is wonderful to be sitting here on this evening with you all again. It is wonderful to be back on the sea of friendship. All of you have occupied a very special place in my life and, indeed, in my heart - from ringing in the new year in 2018 all the way back to ringing in the new year in 1986. There are few greater pleasures in life than being surrounded by friends and family you love and admire.
This is why it is all so difficult that the evening must end. I must leave and head home to a sleeping house with a - hopefully - sleeping daughter. I never want a good party to end and have been terrible at ending them of late.
But leave I must, to head back into my year of solitude where I am sure I will get many things done, but it will be pure hell. I will be counting the minutes until I will be able to sit with you all again and continue our great adventure.
In the meantime, behave yourselves, keep fit, and don’t drink all the wine.
Best, Maxwell
PS. All pics by the amazing Jesse Dittmar
