New years message

Hiya,
It’s a new year and I’m back to blogging.

I was hoping to get a few things finished off last year like the Spanish dolphins peice, but December has been pretty busy, so I’ll finish these items off in the next couple of weeks.

First up, Christmas.
I can be a 'grumpy old man' when this time of year rolls around.
I don't have a TV so I get to miss a big chunk of the commercialisation type thing, and this has helped reduce the degree of season surliness.
Some of the best Christmas’s I've had, was when I was travelling and living in hostels.
Christmas would be a coming together of all the strangers that were living in the hostel at that moment.
Not having friends and family around forced everyone together and it was simple and nice.

No baggage or expectation, Just food and fellowship.

This year I was a dirty whiner, and told everyone that I was sick of spending the Christmas/New year period isolated in my flat next to the beach in sunny shiny Sydney (yeah I know, I said I was a dirty whiner)
So I had heaps of invitations suddenly appearing (I will take anything from a ‘pity fuck’ down to a ‘pity dinner party’ or ‘pity meet up for a cup of coffee.’)

My immediate relatives and I got together the day before Christmas. Four generations sitting around a long table, the top of which was uneven as it was jerry rigged from a series of small table’s hidden beneath a couple of table cloths.
I think I made the comment ‘when did we become the Walton’s?’
All the girls were trying to out ‘domestic goddess’ each other. All the boys were trying to out talk each other.
At one point I visited the toilet which was down the other end of the house, and realising the I could still hear everyone perfectly, muttered to myself ‘gee we make a lot of noise when we all get together!’

The thing with ‘hanging out’ with family is that I don’t get a choice in who these people are. So I get to hang out with all sorts, including people with right wing political views. These people have started making comments like ‘what a disaster Bush has been,’ and I’m left weirded out that it’s taken them almost seven years to work this out.

Christmas day dawned grey, and it was real quiet out on the streets (I set fire to a couple of cars and no one noticed.)
A ‘quiet one,’ is where the family has disappeared off to celebrations with their partners families.
I detoxed by drinking a few refreshing G&T’s. Ate oven fries, crumbed fish, and drained a bottle of red for Christmas dinner.
Afternoon saw some golden rays bathing the city.

Boxing Day saw me arriving for dinner with my mates. A lovely couple who have a deaf little dog, a brilliant liquor cabinet, and who have finally found a sunny corner for their two ‘pot plants.’

Then there was a BBQ with an ‘inner circle’ group from work, so my commitment to building contacts within the industry is proceeding nicely.
There was the usual bitching about our respective employers.
Most of the people had bought their kids along, so in the future I will need to find a child that I can steal for a night.

Chilled out till New Years Eve, where I joined a billon other bodies in the city.
In Sydney a lot of people gather down at the harbour where we watch fireworks mounted to the high curving iron span of the harbour bridge, from barges floating down in the harbour, and from a few of the tall buildings in the city.
The fireworks started and the concussive shock of the ignitions, showers of sparks reflected in walls of windows, the spotlights mounted on the bridge, sweeping the swirling gunpowder smoke haze, was giving me World War Two flash backs, and I wasn’t born then!
One of the rocket platforms floated in the harbour twenty meters away from where I was standing.
My clothing shivered, and the wharf that I was standing on shook with each air burst over head.
Supposedly three tons of crackers where burnt that night.

I was standing close to a group of girls who were screaming in some sort of prepubescent multi orgasmic release.
I kept looking around to see if Robbie Williams or Johnny Depp had suddenly materialised somewhere nearby.
I left around two, and noticed on the way back home that lot’s of women were wearing really impractical footwear. Lots of minuscule-flappy-sandaled-heeled numbers. I reckon some would be cleaning out between their toes when they got home, what with all the debris lying around like mashed cans spilling puddles of beer, cigarette butts, broken glass bottles, vomit, possibly blood, and sticky discarded chips smothered in tomato sauce.

The only people more busy then the buses and street sweepers at two that morning, were the ambulance crews.