February 2006 |
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This month actually got off to a bit of a quiet start. Rod and David had their annual party at their home in St Peters. Once again it was a very pleasant night and lots of alcohol was consumed by all. It wasn't a late one for us though. There were plenty of late nights in January.  Why so many people go to the South Coast and never return. The views, of course. My Aunty Beris lives at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach in Gerroa. She used to live there with my Aunty June, but unfortunately Aunty June passed away last year. Gerroa is about two hours drive south of Sydney. Actually, in my teens I used to spend a good part of every summer holiday staying with Beris and June in their house on the beach. We were quite close before adulthood distracted me and life turned all very serious. But I digress. The reason I mention this now is because Greig and I decided that we should take a drive to Gerroa to: The thought of going to the beach did cross my mind, but the weather seemed a little too cool for that. As it turned out, it was a lovely sunny day. Anyway, took the slow road to Gerroa, had a lovely lunch in Kiama and dropped in and saw Aunty Beris in Gerroa. All in all, a very pleasant days outing. Being the month leading up to Mardi Gras, there are usually a few things going on. Usually we would head out to the Mardi Gras Launch, however this year it turned into an event that you needed to buy tickets for, rather than a community event. Greig and I chose to give it a miss. Based on what we were told by friends who went, we didn't miss much except for lots of advertising on a huge screen. The other fun event leading up to Mardi Gras is of course, Fair Day. I kinda didn't make it to that either as I managed to get myself somewhat "distracted" the night before. All reports were that Fair Day was a huge success. I didn't mind that much. After all, I had spent a fun night in the container testing the strength of the various fittings. :-) One Mardi Gras event that we did make it to was the Jimmy Somerville concert at the State Theatre. The State was stuffed to the rafters with middle aged gay men - including Greig and me of course.  Jimmy Somerville - Shorter, older, louder. Jimmy Somerville has probably produced some of the most important music every produced for gay men through his work with Bronski Beat, the Communards and his solo career. His lyrics seemed to echo the torments and angst of an entire generation in the 90's, a time that not only were gay men demanding to be treated with respect, but friends were dying in huge numbers from AIDS. Even better, it was also fabulous to dance to. It was wonderful to see him performing so many of his greats on stage. Actually, the first half of the show was fairly subdued. He did many of his ballads accompanied by piano and bass, and sometimes by the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Choir. The second half was very different. The stage was cleared, the backing tapes came out and the State went into party mode. Thousands of middle aged gay men partied on, waving their arms in the air - a bottle of amyl in one hand, a respirator mask in the other. After having the house in Dulwich Hill on the market for all of a week, two different parties were showing extreme interest. In fact, they both spent over a week trying to outbid each other on the place. Strangely, I always thought the idea of buying a place was to try to get it at the cheapest price, not the most expensive. Just goes to show what I know. In any case, one came out the winner and had made a deposit. Now we just need to wait for 6 weeks before we get to see any of the money. Somehow, that seemed all a bit too easy. I can't get the niggling feeling out of the back of my mind that we were asking too little. But then again, if we were greedy then we'd probably still be waiting for someone to show interest. Oh, I did do a quick overnight trip to Melbourne for work, but it was completely uneventful and hardly worth reporting here. So I won't. Damn. I already wrote it down. |
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