December 2005

It’s Christmas Party Season!

The first party of the month was my work Christmas Party which was a thrilling affair. It’s the usual work-type Christmas event where the C.E.O. of the company stands up and tells everyone to have a great time. They then go on to remind everyone about the company alcohol policy and to drink responsibly, following up with the offer that if you do find yourself a bit “under the weather”, feel free to come up to any of the Management Team and they will be happy to arrange for your transport home. Only one person at the party took up that offer. His last day was about two weeks later.

Greig's Christmas Party was very different. It seems that excessive drinking is mandatory. I won’t go into details as to the condition he was in when he got home that night other than to say that when I arrived home from work the following day there was a beautiful bunch of flowers and a box of chocolates waiting for me as a form of reconciliation.

Me and Greig at Jimi's Christmas
BBQ. No, I am not short!.

It’s Sam’s birthday this month and to celebrate he held a civilised little cocktail party at his apartment. Highlights of the evening were seeing who could hit the most expensive car in the car park with Champagne corks, and a green drink called, somewhat appropriately, “The Green Drink”. It consists of every green coloured liquor you could think of all mixed up together and topped up with a few white liquor’s for good measure. Surprisingly, no-one died.

There was also Jimi’s traditional Christmas BBQ, Grant and Kelly’s Housewarming, Cupcake and Muffin's Christmas Adventure and Christmas Eve with Sean and Azim. I think that’s got me up to Christmas Day.

Cupcakes and Muffin's Christmas Adventure and Christmas Eve with Sean and Azim certainly deserve special mention.

Cupcake and Muffin are in fact Sam and his flatmate, Craig. Obvious names for a couple of footy-heads. They held a huge Christmas feast for about 20 people, all sitting down around the table sharing food, wine and good times. It was just a wonderfully pleasant afternoon.

Sean and Azim did something similar on Christmas Eve for a different group of people. Sean and Azim are a couple (although, not a couple) of English guys we met through Jimi. They provided lots of food, good times, Christmas carols, games and generally fun times.

Apart from the fresh salmon (which arrived fashionably late), one of the highlights of the evening would have been the home made mace, which cleared the entire kitchen area of all living creatures in a matter of seconds – everyone clutching their throats and choking, with tears streaming from their eyes. This is apparently what happens if you overcook powdered chilli in a microwave and then open the door to let the smoke out. (Why would you put chilli powder in a microwave anyway, one ponders!)

I took the last week of the month off work – mainly because I could. On Christmas Day I drove to Oberon, a small town just the other side of the mountains about two and a half hours away. My brother lives there with his family and they were having a Christmas get-together for most of my family. As well as my parents, all my brothers were there including my oldest brother who I haven’t seen in probably twenty years – not since he moved to Darwin with his family. The only person not there was my sister, who was stuck working in her home town of Wagga.

I didn’t stay for long. I had lunch with them, showed my holiday photo’s and then pissed off out of there. It was just the least I could do for a family gathering where Greig isn’t invited. The absolute least. I love my family, but I'd rather be with Greig.

On Boxing Day Greig and I headed off to the beach with Purse and Jim. “Greig at the beach?”, you ask? Surely not! But, yes. He almost got a tan! We went to Congwong Beach in the south of Sydney. I also managed to get to Lady Jane Beach a couple of days before New Years with Jimi. Two beach days all summer. Woo hoo!

New Years Eve was spent at a huge party on Bondi Beach. Fat Boy Slim was DJ’ing and Greig and I were contracted to produce a broadcast for Triple J. We arrived at Bondi before lunch to ensure our place on the stage as well as to ensure our parking space. The area was being locked down to all traffic from 3pm so we had to be settled by then.

After setting up and doing some tests we spent the afternoon wandering the strip, looking in shops and generally lounging around on the beach. The party didn’t start until 9pm and we couldn’t leave the area after lockdown so we just killed time.

The view from the stage.
15,000 people on the foreshore of Bondi Beach.

At 9pm they opened the gates and 15,000 people streamed in. The crowd was amazingly well behaved and from my vantage point on the stage I couldn’t see any trouble at all. After a couple of local DJ’s played, Fat Boy Slim came on at Midnight while fireworks were set off from behind the stage on the beach. I thought he played a great set with lots of classic tracks remixed and mashed up. His three hour set seemed to pass really quickly.

The gig ended up at 3am. Actually, Fat Boy Slim ended up at 2:58am forcing us to play two minutes of crowd noise to the listeners out there in radio-land. Not the most exciting radio in the world, but there were noise pollution curfews which meant that if he finished after 3am there probably would have been huge fines involved.

Bump-out was surprisingly quick and easy. The crowd dispersed and we were able to get the gear loaded into the car with only a few punters coming up to us, trying to hug us, thank us for a great gig and tell us that they “loved us, man”. Well, that explains why there were no fights that night.