Another Getaway episode...
5 January 2005, 22:12
Tassie is fab. I can’t believe I’ve never been there, considering we live a mere pissing-distance away from it.
The vacation started on v. auspicious and rock ‘n’ roll note, sharing our flight with John Butler (of J.B Trio) and Billy Bragg on their way to the Falls Festival in Hobart. Husband, bless him, who is major J.B fan was heard to remark that it “felt like we were on the road with the band”...
New Years Eve…
...was spent with our dear friends Tom and Diane. Stupid Kinki forgot, of course, that it was NYE and every restaurant in the greater Hobart area had been booked out for weeks, but we managed to get into our hotel’s restaurant which was just dandy. I need to take Husband’s advice that everything will turn out OK. Which it did.
We took a stroll down to the docks and after a ride on the carousel (which Tom and McG demurred at, fearing, I fear, that it was not the manly thing to be seen doing), reserved pole possie on the docks and waited for the stroke of midnight and the fireworks bonanza.
00.01 is always a bit of a let-down. There’s such a build-up before midnight and then everything kind of… stops. People who should have fallen into gutters hours ago finally get their pass, there’s a mass retreat into homes or pubs or cars and the streets are melancholy.
McG asked me if I had any resolutions. I have three. Will I keep them? Probably not, but here goes…
1. Stop biting my fingernails and surrounding areas. It really is disgusting.
2. Be more positive and less cynical. This one will be difficult and may require the assistance of mental-health professional. Thanks Australian Unity. Will put it on the tab.
3. Be kinder to husband. This will be easier and the rewards more instantaneous. I didn’t buy massage oil for nothing, you know…
It looks likes a stringed instrument. It sounds like a stringed instrument. But what the hell is it?
Andrew and Kathleen’s Wedding
Talking about being organised (well… I was a while ago), Kathleen, the better half of the soon to-be-marrieds had the entire reception place set-up the day before the wedding. Is this normal? It may be normal, but it made me laugh. Appears I’m not the only anal-retentive organiser amongst my friends.
The wedding was just beautiful. They must have wondered, though, how they’d managed to piss off Mother Nature so thoroughly, given that the weather had been picture-perfect before the wedding but chose, on cue, to piss down just as it began.
Everyone who tells you ”...but it’s lucky if it rains on your wedding day” is a big fat justifying liar. It sucks. You want it to be perfect and if it’s not, it really really sucks. Luckily, they managed to change the venue at the last minute from the Japanese garden to the Conservatory at the Botanical Gardens.
Do grooms always look like they’re about to shit themselves? Poor Andrew held it together very nicely, but he looked soooooo nervous. Although, Kathleen looked like such a knock-out, it was probably more of a stunned “I can’t believe my frikkin’ luck here” rather than an “Omigod please don’t throw-up all over those hydrangeas”...
The Reception was also beautiful, particularly Andrew’s speech which had the whole room in tears. Of both sadness and laughter. McG and I felt a bit embarassed that our speeches at our own wedding were such drunken ad-libbed shite. We really needed to do more research on that one.
The wine flowed, the music was boogie-able and the setting – in one of the reception rooms at Elizabeth Street Pier was second-to-none. OK, second maybe to our own, but hell, I’m biased.
That’s what I’m talkin’ aBOUT
The Aftermath…
Didn’t pull up too badly the next day, but Husband and I had been spending way too much time together – 24/7 for nearly two weeks, so we were chotto narky at each other all the way out to Port Arthur (Kinki and McG, of course, forgot that it was New Years and all the rental cars had been booked solid until the 6th Jan, so we were lucky to get one for two days. Mental note.)
Port Arthur was more interesting than I thought it would be. I guess the 1996 massacre has somewhat overshadowed it’s original drawcard of being one of the early convict penitentiaries. Historically, it’s pretty awesome, and given that Australia is a pretty “new” country in terms of European settlement (only 220 years or so), it’s among the best we’ve got.
We were really ready to come home, but I’m so not ready to go back to work tomorrow. I’m actually dreading it a bit. But in alignment with my NYRs, I’m going to look on the bright side of going back to work. Which is that the weekend is only two days away…
Life is just all one big merry-go-round innit?
Andrew and Kathleen’s nuptial’s gallery
Hobart and surrounds gallery
Permanent Link | - Your strange instrument is a symphonia (better known as a hurdy gurdy) (tried to put a comment in the gallery but the system won't post it there)
— Leonard Gump Jan 6, 02:24 PM # - If you "google" hurdy gurdy you'll find all styles of players. Check out http://www.hurdygurdy.com/hg/hghome.html as only one example.
— Leonard Gump Jan 7, 12:33 PM #
