June 2007

Well, this month started off on a bit of a high note. Bailey is in Melbourne doing a show – the final city on a tour that’s apparently been going for a year now. The last performance was at the start of the month so Sam and I decided to fly to Melbourne to help him celebrate.

So, instead of attending the cast party after the final night on Saturday night, Bailey “bailed” and joined Sam and me at a certain venue that is well known for having huge piles of empty 44 gallon drums in the basement. (Actually, I bumped into Cammy there. That was a surprise. You can't hide anywhere these days.) Bailey had booked the “Presidential Suite” for us, a nice size room with lots of “functional furniture”. (IKEA could learn a lot from these guys.)

Distant ocean views from the apartment, which is about
the only Melbourne pic I can publish. :-)

We spent about 8 hours in that room, testing all the furniture to make sure it was solidly built. I assure you, it is. The venue started playing some really crappy music at about 7am, which we took as our hint to leave.

We cabbed back to Bailey’s apartment, had a cup of tea, and then started testing the furniture there – comparing it for robustness and functionality against the previous venue. It wasn’t quite the same, but none the less, we made do.

We did manage some sleep that day, waking in the afternoon and wandering off in search of food. After breakfast/lunch/dinner (whatever it was), we headed back to the apartment. It seems that a couple of weeks prior, Bailey had met a nice young man from Melbourne called Tim. He’d arranged for Tim to join us on Sunday evening for a spot of sport.

Tim is cute. (I hope he doesn’t read this.) He’s very much Sam’s type and also very much my type. I’m assuming that because of the repeat performance, he’s very much Baileys type as well. He's certainly very much fun.

We spent about 8 hours doing some more thorough testing of the furniture in the apartment and discovered that the dining table provided wasn’t quite as solid as it first appeared. Not to worry – it held up for long enough and we were able to tighten the legs enough to make sure Bailey didn’t cop any blame for damage. It turned out the coffee table was much more solid.

Both Bailey and Tim managed to come out of the weekend with some pretty huge bruises. I guess that’s what happens if you decide to play a “contact sport”. Sam and I came out of the weekend with some pretty huge grins.

Dinner at a relaxing pace.

We had a nice social month this month. We had a little dinner party with Sam, Bailey and Dud. We then had a nice big dinner party with Rod & David, Grant & Kelly, Matt & Justin and of course Greig & me. A real “married couples” affair.

We also joined Grant & Kelly (and a cast of thousands) to help celebrate Grant's birthday. That was a pleasant few hours at a pub in Erskineville, sipping cocktails. Before you start making any wild accusations about the type of venue that we would attend, let me state for the record that it was not the Imperial Hotel.

Another highlight was the fundraiser for the Sydney Convicts Rugby Team at the Midnight Shift. It was a huge night! By 10pm the place was packed to the rafters with boys wanting to see a group of rugby players get their kit off. I spent the evening loitering with Sam and Bailey, waiting for the show to start. This time Sam had managed to weasel his way out of being on stage.

Bailey reported a cute moment when the show was starting. He was standing a little bit behind us with his ex. Another guy next to them pointed to Sam in his Convicts t-shirt and asked, "Why isn't he stripping?" Sam has yet another fan, it seems.

The show came on. Rugby players danced around the stage – badly. They took their clothes off and flashed their dicks around. A good time was had by all.

In general news, this month has been wild weather-wise. Huge downfalls saw us emptying buckets of water from a leak in the gutter and even caused some speculation that the drought might be over. I'll believe that when I see it.

The Pasha Bulker on Nobbys Beach.

But this spectacular pic caught my eye. The Pasha Bulker is a new bulk carrier that chose to ignore the requests to move away from the Newcastle coast as the storms hit. As a result it spent a month beached and was damn lucky to finally get away in one piece.

You think they'd learn. The Sygna made the same mistake off the same coast on it's maiden voyage back in 1974. It wasn't so lucky. It's rusted remains are still there.

Unfortunately, this month wasn't all breaking furniture, socialising and ship wrecks. Tony Conlan, a friend of ours from Melbourne died suddenly. He'd just returned for a long overdue two month holiday overseas when he suddenly took ill. He died that night in Hospital from a aneurism.

His funeral service was held in Canberra, so Greig and I drove there on a very cold and wet winters morning. It was all very bleak.

Tony was a very driven person. Some may say a work-a-holic, but he really wasn't that bad. He'd spent his life getting to the point where he could really start to enjoy the fruits of his labour, only to have his life suddenly ripped away. A common point of discussion at the funeral was how important it is to live your life now. You never know what's around the corner.

I guess I can't be too down. This month I did a hell of a lot of living.