The awkward moments you'll experience at every housewarming

• Have you succumbed to middle-class-benchtop syndrome?
• Excellent domestic traditions from around the world
• Housewarming gifts for every budget

If you go to a party at somebody’s house and the second you walk in through the door you have to instantly pull a grotesque, contorted Butoh-face of delight and start peering around, babbling idiotically, going “Oh wow! – ohwowwwww! – this is! – the space! – I mean – you guys! – the floor! – OHWOWWWWWWWW!!!!!”… then you have gone to a housewarming party.

And you have to keep doing this ridiculous babbling for the rest of the party until your mouth rips open at the seams and your soft palate falls out.

If you go to a party at somebody’s house and you have to give the hosts a gift, but not a normal gift like alcohol or choccies, it has to be something unique and amazing to enhance their living environment, and you panicked and bought them a huge potted phallus-shaped cactus with a weird red tip … then you have gone to a housewarming party.

And the hosts will take the cactus and say “Oh … how nice!” but you know they don’t mean it and you’ll be kicking yourself that you didn’t buy the 24-piece pickle-prong set, or the Totokia Fijian war club designed to drive a hole through an enemy’s skull.

If you go to a party at somebody’s house and the host pours you a glass of wine and you put the glass of wine down on their new kitchen benchtop and the host starts screaming “NOOOOOO, PICK UP THE GLASS! THE BENCHTOP IS HEWN FROM ANCIENT MAGMA SOURCED FROM AN EXTINCT VOLCANO IN EL SALVADOR! AND IT HASN’T BEEN SEALED YET! PICK UP THE GLASS!!!!!”… then you have gone to a housewarming party.

And for the rest of the night the host will be in the kitchen with a Chux cloth and Gumption, rubbing at a tiny red-wine mark, weeping copiously, trying not to get tears on their unsealed Parthenon-marble kitchen floor tiles.

If you go to a party at somebody’s house and the host forces you to go on a house tour (the other host, not the one weeping in the kitchen with the Chux cloth and Gumption) and you wind up in a bathroom, eight of you squished in there, still holding your drinks and nibbles, getting a 10-minute lecture on the space-saving benefits of a wall-mounted toilet … then you have gone to a housewarming party.

And at some point you will all have to line up and have a go at the soft-closing toilet seat, which feels slightly damp, and a little bit sticky.

If you go to a party at somebody’s house and you leave early because you’re too afraid of putting down your drink anywhere, and you’re too nervous to use the bathroom in case of tour groups, and you’re feeling nauseous from the fresh-paint fumes and the reek of unresolved plumbing issues … then you have gone to a housewarming party.

And as soon as you’ve left, the hosts will make cruel, bitchy jokes about you and your gift, riffing on the theme of phallus-shaped cacti and their big cactus pricks.