The Happy Holidays Post
Well kids, looks like a new year is upon us and it’s time to get back into the swing of things. But first, a few festive updates.
I spent Christmas in the picturesque town of Bermagui on the New South Wales Coast, where my Uncle lives. It was my first interstate family Christmas since 1994, which was also the last time I saw my Uncle and Aunt. He had a nice house situated near a lake with copious amounts of wildlife inhabiting the area, it was just unfortunate it’s such a bitch to get to. It took us two days to drive there, with the ironic added bonus of a 43 degree day on the drive there, a 41 degree drive home a week later, yet non stop rain in between. Just one of those situations when the weather gods decided not to be nice, and chose to pick pussy scabs off their knees and stuff them in our mouths instead.
It’s probably worth mentioning that I’d had a bad back for at least three months leading up to the trip, and sitting for longer than an hour caused me grief. Riding in a car for two days straight left my spine feeling as battered as a porn star’s tonsils, and I limped out of the vehicle when we arrived at my Uncle’s house late Christmas Eve. After a series of hugs and cheek kisses (I used to have a couple elderly Aunts who insisted on kissing family members on the mouth, thankfully they are both dead now) we made our way to my Uncle’s recently finished outdoor entertainment area, whereby he revealed a pleasing amount of beers and fine wines, and a Seafood spread that made me weep with joy. Come midnight we were shuffled off to our accommodation, whereby I learnt the house was at maximum capacity of sleeping relatives, and I had to spend the week sleeping in a tent in the backyard. This fact should amuse most of you guys, as you all know I’m about as outdoorsy as Anne Frank.
Christmas Day was the usual fanfare of present opening and feasting, with the traditional crappy crackers getting pulled. I was looking forward to getting a miniature compass or toy from my cracker, only to be rewarded with a plastic whistle. In fact, all of the crackers had plastic whistles in them. We all blew the whistles in a piercing fanfare at the table, until the novelty wore off roughly four seconds later. After lunch my Uncle suggested we drink a couple of bottles of red and watch Bad Santa, and in one deft swoop elevated himself from mere Uncle, to most favourite relative ever. It set the mood for the rest of the week, seven days of drinking, sightseeing, poker playing, and getting to know the neighbourhood fauna.
The house was surrounded by native vegetation, which meant all kinds of local animals would come through the front and backyards for a visit. On one day we woke up to find nine kangaroos sitting round the yard chewing on grass, including joeys sticking out of pouches and everything. I took a heap of photos on my old lady’s camera, and I might upload some photos and post them on the blog if I can be fucked making the effort (spoiler: I can’t).
Besides the kangaroos, there were possums and all kinds of colourful birds hanging about. There was even a pair of Kookaburras that would stop by every day, and sit in a gum tree and laugh their insane cackle. Yes, it was a good old Aussie Christmas complete with local fauna, which made for great viewing during the day as we sipped beers and ate from the barbie. Of course, it was a different story at night, as the various beasts crawled and slithered past my tent while I lay there shaking in the darkness. On more than one occasion I awoke to hear marsupials mating less than a foot from my head. It was a little unnerving to say the least. The overcast nights made for pitch black darkness in the tent, and I would wake to that five second “holy shit, where am I!?” zone humans experience when we are in that limbo between sleeping and waking, only to hear a growling, gurgling sound not completely dissimilar to the one Predator makes. I’d pull the covers tight, with my heart beating like a jackhammer and the only thought that could penetrate my sweaty skull was a recurring ”What would Bear Grylls do?”
Seriously, fuck camping. Next person who asks me to go on a camping weekend will get punched in the throat.
The Excursion eventually came to a close, and we departed early on the morning of the 30th. Before we departed, the wildlife had one last act of torment in store for me. We had decided to do the drive home in one hit, which involved us leaving at 4:30am. I was chatting on the front lawn with my Uncle at about 4:25am, saying my goodbyes in a hazy sleep deprived state, when two bats flew between us out of nowhere, one of the bats clipping me in the face with its wing. I was so tired it didn’t either register until at least an hour later that, holy shit, I had just been hit in the face by a fucking bat.
Driving from Bermagui to Adelaide in one day involves sitting in a car for 17 fucking hours straight. The first fifth of the trip isn’t too bad, as the Snowy Mountains are quite scenic. But then you hit the long stretch, where you experience the “true Australia”: scrubland and yellowing acres of rural fields. Miles and miles of endless nothing, it’s so agonisingly boring that local farmers have been known to light bush fires, just so they have something to fucking look at. I relented to the lure of texting to relieve the boredom somewhere out on the hay plain, and found that no less than three groups of mates were descending on the coastal town of Victor Harbour for New year’s Eve (only an hour from Adelaide, so a doddle compared to the odyssey I had just been on). Several texts later, and I had a lift, accommodation, and for the first time in almost a decade, something to actually do on New Year’s Eve sorted.
We hit home base at about 10:30pm, and I’d been shaking for the last hour from Cabin Fever. I got out of the car to find that somehow, mysteriously, the 17 straight hours of sitting had fixed my bad back. Seriously, it hasn’t hurt since. Irony working in my favour is a completely alien sensation, I have to tell you.
I crashed that night in my much missed bed, enjoying the serenity of sleeping without possums fucking in my ear hole. The following morning I awoke to the last day of 2009, packed a bag, and jumped into a car with Aspin and Mule to head to Victor.
We stopped off at a winery to have lunch with Yatesy, Wal and others, whereby we ate expensive platters of fine foods, drank a few bottles of wine, and drank the only two beers they had in the whole winery (!). The rest of the day was spent driving around and catching up with various felons around the greater area of Victor Harbour, or trying to catch up and failing due to lousy directions. We finally settled at a holiday home rented by Dowling and Lachie, and spent the night drinking piss and playing card games. At the stroke of midnight we watched the Sydney Harbour Bridge fire works on TV, which was followed by (what definitely was a strange choice of broadcasting considering the prime programming slot) the 1980 musical Can’t Stop the Music.
Which, as far as I could tell, involved a young music writer putting together a band to sing his collection of songs. The musician was a 21 year old Steve Guttenberg, putting in the most spastically hyperactive performance I’ve ever seen put to film. The singers he “randomly” came across on his musical journey were the Village People. He happens to cross paths with the various singers (except for the Indian, who was already Guttenberg’s flatmate), and all of their characters based on their costumed alter egos. So the Cop is actually a cop, the Construction worker, a construction worker.
We watched the entire film sitting on the couch sipping Coronas, with the volume off. The laptop with the night’s music choices was dominating the soundtrack of the house, so we listened to that while watching Can’t Stop the Music on mute. My first film experience of 2010 was a surreal one, and more than a little foreboding.
I managed to get to bed before 3am in a reasonable state, which left me hangover free for our beach adventure at noon the next day. Our beach of choice was Boomer’s, a local stretch of coast infested with bratty teenagers (like most of Victor Harbour), but with the odd chance of having some decent waves. There was also the odd chance that the beach would have constant choppy waves to smash at your bruised bodies relentlessly, which was what Boomer’s was providing on that sunny day of January 1st. Of course.
I’m not much of a beach person, so I was more than a little out of practice when I hit the surf. I managed to hold my own for a decent amount of time, diving under the waves that were hitting, swimming up and over the ones yet to break. But I knew I was in trouble when Dowling warned me with a stern “We need to go LOW for this next wave”, and suddenly the water that had been up to my chest was pulled out to around my knees, and in front of me was a giant fuck you wave. I dived down as far as I could, but it wasn’t far enough and the liquid leviathan grabbed me and tossed and turned me around like a penis in a vacuum cleaner. I finally managed to get my bearings and stand up, gasping for air, only to find another wave beating down on me and sending me through the exact same motions. This time I didn’t have the luxury of air in my lungs, as the wave pile drove me into the sand under a tonne of sea water. I tumbled and squirmed as the current kept me under, fighting to get back above sea level as the current held me down. At one point, everything went all black, and I swear Davy Jones himself tried to finger me. I eventually came bursting back out of the water like an angry Poseidon, gasping to get air back into my aching lungs. I stumbled back onto the safe shore with sea weed in my hair and crabs hanging off my nipples, I would have muttered “fuck this” if the three gallons of salt water I had swallowed hadn’t impeded my ability to speak. I had ocean up my nose and in my ears. I had sand in places only a Scout Master would venture. I rubbed my red raw eyes to spot several locals staring at me like I was some kind of retarded sea monster (did I mention all of the above had happened in about four feet of water?), there was only one thing I really knew for sure:
Next person who asks me to go to the beach will get punched in the throat.
I arrived back in Adelaide at Five in the afternoon, sporting an impressive sun burn, bar the white hand prints of my juvenile attempts at applying suntan lotion. I showered for about 30 minutes, trying to get all of the sand out of my body, and all of the Guttenberg out of my mind. I failed on both counts.
And that, my dear friends, was how I spent the final week of 2009, a year that Time Magazine described as (and I’m paraphrasing here) ”kinda shit”. For me, 2009 was a year I concentrated on paying off debts and working my way through the “Rock n Roll Hangover”, that first 12 months of London detox every returning ex-patriot must go through. As a whole, 2009 wasn’t bad. A transitional year for me, marking the end of an era.
Although technically the decade isn’t over until the end of this year, it is the end of that patch of time we called “the Noughties”. Anybody have any idea what the next decade is called? I’ve heard it referred to as the “tens” , the “twenty tens” and the “teens” , though “teens” doesn’t really fit for 2010, 2011 or 2012. One guy on Google Answers suggested that if the years are in their teens, let’s call this next ten years “the Pubies” . One thing is for sure, the topic has warranted countless hours of aggressively retarded conversation.
Welcome to 2010 anyway, kids. Did you all have a boozy New year’s Eve? What about Christmas? Get any awesome gifts? My best present came from a cousin currently living in Tokyo, and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty damn sweet:
I wear this every night, so that I don’t get cold when I go sleepwalking. A few of the neighbourhood kids have seen me walking around my backyard after dark wearing it, and think that I am some kind of crime fighter. God bless their fertile imaginations.
That wasn’t the only interesting present I received, I also got this from the Secret Santa at work:
I need a new job.
I spent Christmas in the picturesque town of Bermagui on the New South Wales Coast, where my Uncle lives. It was my first interstate family Christmas since 1994, which was also the last time I saw my Uncle and Aunt. He had a nice house situated near a lake with copious amounts of wildlife inhabiting the area, it was just unfortunate it’s such a bitch to get to. It took us two days to drive there, with the ironic added bonus of a 43 degree day on the drive there, a 41 degree drive home a week later, yet non stop rain in between. Just one of those situations when the weather gods decided not to be nice, and chose to pick pussy scabs off their knees and stuff them in our mouths instead.
It’s probably worth mentioning that I’d had a bad back for at least three months leading up to the trip, and sitting for longer than an hour caused me grief. Riding in a car for two days straight left my spine feeling as battered as a porn star’s tonsils, and I limped out of the vehicle when we arrived at my Uncle’s house late Christmas Eve. After a series of hugs and cheek kisses (I used to have a couple elderly Aunts who insisted on kissing family members on the mouth, thankfully they are both dead now) we made our way to my Uncle’s recently finished outdoor entertainment area, whereby he revealed a pleasing amount of beers and fine wines, and a Seafood spread that made me weep with joy. Come midnight we were shuffled off to our accommodation, whereby I learnt the house was at maximum capacity of sleeping relatives, and I had to spend the week sleeping in a tent in the backyard. This fact should amuse most of you guys, as you all know I’m about as outdoorsy as Anne Frank.
Christmas Day was the usual fanfare of present opening and feasting, with the traditional crappy crackers getting pulled. I was looking forward to getting a miniature compass or toy from my cracker, only to be rewarded with a plastic whistle. In fact, all of the crackers had plastic whistles in them. We all blew the whistles in a piercing fanfare at the table, until the novelty wore off roughly four seconds later. After lunch my Uncle suggested we drink a couple of bottles of red and watch Bad Santa, and in one deft swoop elevated himself from mere Uncle, to most favourite relative ever. It set the mood for the rest of the week, seven days of drinking, sightseeing, poker playing, and getting to know the neighbourhood fauna.
The house was surrounded by native vegetation, which meant all kinds of local animals would come through the front and backyards for a visit. On one day we woke up to find nine kangaroos sitting round the yard chewing on grass, including joeys sticking out of pouches and everything. I took a heap of photos on my old lady’s camera, and I might upload some photos and post them on the blog if I can be fucked making the effort (spoiler: I can’t).
Besides the kangaroos, there were possums and all kinds of colourful birds hanging about. There was even a pair of Kookaburras that would stop by every day, and sit in a gum tree and laugh their insane cackle. Yes, it was a good old Aussie Christmas complete with local fauna, which made for great viewing during the day as we sipped beers and ate from the barbie. Of course, it was a different story at night, as the various beasts crawled and slithered past my tent while I lay there shaking in the darkness. On more than one occasion I awoke to hear marsupials mating less than a foot from my head. It was a little unnerving to say the least. The overcast nights made for pitch black darkness in the tent, and I would wake to that five second “holy shit, where am I!?” zone humans experience when we are in that limbo between sleeping and waking, only to hear a growling, gurgling sound not completely dissimilar to the one Predator makes. I’d pull the covers tight, with my heart beating like a jackhammer and the only thought that could penetrate my sweaty skull was a recurring ”What would Bear Grylls do?”
Seriously, fuck camping. Next person who asks me to go on a camping weekend will get punched in the throat.
The Excursion eventually came to a close, and we departed early on the morning of the 30th. Before we departed, the wildlife had one last act of torment in store for me. We had decided to do the drive home in one hit, which involved us leaving at 4:30am. I was chatting on the front lawn with my Uncle at about 4:25am, saying my goodbyes in a hazy sleep deprived state, when two bats flew between us out of nowhere, one of the bats clipping me in the face with its wing. I was so tired it didn’t either register until at least an hour later that, holy shit, I had just been hit in the face by a fucking bat.
Driving from Bermagui to Adelaide in one day involves sitting in a car for 17 fucking hours straight. The first fifth of the trip isn’t too bad, as the Snowy Mountains are quite scenic. But then you hit the long stretch, where you experience the “true Australia”: scrubland and yellowing acres of rural fields. Miles and miles of endless nothing, it’s so agonisingly boring that local farmers have been known to light bush fires, just so they have something to fucking look at. I relented to the lure of texting to relieve the boredom somewhere out on the hay plain, and found that no less than three groups of mates were descending on the coastal town of Victor Harbour for New year’s Eve (only an hour from Adelaide, so a doddle compared to the odyssey I had just been on). Several texts later, and I had a lift, accommodation, and for the first time in almost a decade, something to actually do on New Year’s Eve sorted.
We hit home base at about 10:30pm, and I’d been shaking for the last hour from Cabin Fever. I got out of the car to find that somehow, mysteriously, the 17 straight hours of sitting had fixed my bad back. Seriously, it hasn’t hurt since. Irony working in my favour is a completely alien sensation, I have to tell you.
I crashed that night in my much missed bed, enjoying the serenity of sleeping without possums fucking in my ear hole. The following morning I awoke to the last day of 2009, packed a bag, and jumped into a car with Aspin and Mule to head to Victor.
We stopped off at a winery to have lunch with Yatesy, Wal and others, whereby we ate expensive platters of fine foods, drank a few bottles of wine, and drank the only two beers they had in the whole winery (!). The rest of the day was spent driving around and catching up with various felons around the greater area of Victor Harbour, or trying to catch up and failing due to lousy directions. We finally settled at a holiday home rented by Dowling and Lachie, and spent the night drinking piss and playing card games. At the stroke of midnight we watched the Sydney Harbour Bridge fire works on TV, which was followed by (what definitely was a strange choice of broadcasting considering the prime programming slot) the 1980 musical Can’t Stop the Music.
Which, as far as I could tell, involved a young music writer putting together a band to sing his collection of songs. The musician was a 21 year old Steve Guttenberg, putting in the most spastically hyperactive performance I’ve ever seen put to film. The singers he “randomly” came across on his musical journey were the Village People. He happens to cross paths with the various singers (except for the Indian, who was already Guttenberg’s flatmate), and all of their characters based on their costumed alter egos. So the Cop is actually a cop, the Construction worker, a construction worker.We watched the entire film sitting on the couch sipping Coronas, with the volume off. The laptop with the night’s music choices was dominating the soundtrack of the house, so we listened to that while watching Can’t Stop the Music on mute. My first film experience of 2010 was a surreal one, and more than a little foreboding.
gumtree.com: Room for rent. Three bedroom house.
Current occupants Steve Guttenberg and a gay Apache.
Current occupants Steve Guttenberg and a gay Apache.
I managed to get to bed before 3am in a reasonable state, which left me hangover free for our beach adventure at noon the next day. Our beach of choice was Boomer’s, a local stretch of coast infested with bratty teenagers (like most of Victor Harbour), but with the odd chance of having some decent waves. There was also the odd chance that the beach would have constant choppy waves to smash at your bruised bodies relentlessly, which was what Boomer’s was providing on that sunny day of January 1st. Of course.
I’m not much of a beach person, so I was more than a little out of practice when I hit the surf. I managed to hold my own for a decent amount of time, diving under the waves that were hitting, swimming up and over the ones yet to break. But I knew I was in trouble when Dowling warned me with a stern “We need to go LOW for this next wave”, and suddenly the water that had been up to my chest was pulled out to around my knees, and in front of me was a giant fuck you wave. I dived down as far as I could, but it wasn’t far enough and the liquid leviathan grabbed me and tossed and turned me around like a penis in a vacuum cleaner. I finally managed to get my bearings and stand up, gasping for air, only to find another wave beating down on me and sending me through the exact same motions. This time I didn’t have the luxury of air in my lungs, as the wave pile drove me into the sand under a tonne of sea water. I tumbled and squirmed as the current kept me under, fighting to get back above sea level as the current held me down. At one point, everything went all black, and I swear Davy Jones himself tried to finger me. I eventually came bursting back out of the water like an angry Poseidon, gasping to get air back into my aching lungs. I stumbled back onto the safe shore with sea weed in my hair and crabs hanging off my nipples, I would have muttered “fuck this” if the three gallons of salt water I had swallowed hadn’t impeded my ability to speak. I had ocean up my nose and in my ears. I had sand in places only a Scout Master would venture. I rubbed my red raw eyes to spot several locals staring at me like I was some kind of retarded sea monster (did I mention all of the above had happened in about four feet of water?), there was only one thing I really knew for sure:
Next person who asks me to go to the beach will get punched in the throat.
I arrived back in Adelaide at Five in the afternoon, sporting an impressive sun burn, bar the white hand prints of my juvenile attempts at applying suntan lotion. I showered for about 30 minutes, trying to get all of the sand out of my body, and all of the Guttenberg out of my mind. I failed on both counts.
And that, my dear friends, was how I spent the final week of 2009, a year that Time Magazine described as (and I’m paraphrasing here) ”kinda shit”. For me, 2009 was a year I concentrated on paying off debts and working my way through the “Rock n Roll Hangover”, that first 12 months of London detox every returning ex-patriot must go through. As a whole, 2009 wasn’t bad. A transitional year for me, marking the end of an era.
Although technically the decade isn’t over until the end of this year, it is the end of that patch of time we called “the Noughties”. Anybody have any idea what the next decade is called? I’ve heard it referred to as the “tens” , the “twenty tens” and the “teens” , though “teens” doesn’t really fit for 2010, 2011 or 2012. One guy on Google Answers suggested that if the years are in their teens, let’s call this next ten years “the Pubies” . One thing is for sure, the topic has warranted countless hours of aggressively retarded conversation.
Welcome to 2010 anyway, kids. Did you all have a boozy New year’s Eve? What about Christmas? Get any awesome gifts? My best present came from a cousin currently living in Tokyo, and I gotta tell ya, it’s pretty damn sweet:
I wear this every night, so that I don’t get cold when I go sleepwalking. A few of the neighbourhood kids have seen me walking around my backyard after dark wearing it, and think that I am some kind of crime fighter. God bless their fertile imaginations.That wasn’t the only interesting present I received, I also got this from the Secret Santa at work:
I need a new job.
posted by Beef at Thursday, January 21, 2010
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