Tuesday, August 20, 2002
The Weekend Wrap-up
Friday
Stayed in and slept mostly. Had lunch with the gang down at The Durham and heard all about the crazy Thursday night antics at the pub that I'd missed out on & so was tempted to visit Friday night, but shook myself out of that thinking knowing that the smokey air would definately have put me out of soccer Saturday morning.
After lunch I joined in on a shopping adventure down in Tuggers. I was after a birthday present for Ms O and after wandering around the toy sections of a couple of stores decided on a kiddy kareoke microphone & stand. J-man picked one up too, as we figured T-bone would want to take one over anyway, and duets are always more fun than singing alone.
Saturday
I woke to another of my 'gee doesn't the universe know how to time things' thoughts when I woke to a story about cordial on Radio National (Ms O's twenty-seventh kids birthday party was coming up).
Having a quiet night in on Friday night definately helped my soccer game; I could run around for pretty much the whole game & even managed to score a goal. We won by one goal. Billy the Fish (our charity money box) got snagged when Louises legs went from under her when she slipped on leaves walking home after the game. The traditional post-game brunch (it's breakfast at 1pm) at The Durham would be our last with surley Gus (he's now gone to work at a fancy-pants Italian place over Manuka way).
Spent the afternoon scrubing, vaccuming, dusting, organising and gift-wrapping. My place was spotless (not anymore of course now that the flatmate's back).
Around half-seven the Kingston crew gathered at Louises place, piled into a maxi-taxi headed for Garran and made some new friends; there was Elenor and Curtis, Lloyd, Penelope, Colin, Tarquin & a couple of others I don't quite remember. The party turned out to be like most other kids parties I've been to; there was lollies, cake, drinks, music and lots of little groups sticking to themselves. There was pass-the-parcel, giant twister with seven colours, the make-out room and the timeless lets-carve-cucumbers-into-phaluses game. There was the Goon-of-Fortune game (take bladder of grog, peg to hills hoist, spin - whoever it stops above must drink of the bladder for 5 seconds) that ended when the bladder flew off the hills hoist and burst on the first spin. There was singing, there was dancing, there was the salt-snorting walk-off. There were boys in white shirts,
college grey shorts and grey knee-high socks with random school ties and Pembroke hats. There were girls in white shirts and short tartan skirts. It goes without saying that all the kids got to take lolly bags home at the end of the party. Emma's excellent cake looked too good for anyone to actually eat - I think it sits intact to this day.
Another maxi-taxi later saw the crew back at Filthies around 3am. There was a very strong post-rugby missing-neck feel about the place. Andy and T-bone had a competition to see who could give away the contents of their lolly bags the quickest. Both encountered resistance, so it's interesting to note the old 'don't accept lollies from strangers' still holds true for so many young lasses. Later, I blinked and lost 5 minutes, so knew it was time to head home - my head hit the pillow at 3.32am.
Sunday
I know Saturday was a big night because I didn't wake up until around half-ten, and I never sleep in on the weekends, I just can't. Got up & watched an interesting story on cartoonist Bill Leak on Sunday before heading off to Toscolini's at Manuka for Nickys birthday lunch. Lunch was good and as always it was good catching up with that gang; Alex is now on a personnel rotation and going well, Sarah had many good travel tales to tell and Mick poked me with a fork, as Mick is want to do. Apparently BattleGrant will be back in country quite soon, but only for a week or so before returning to the UK to work.
I polished off about half a bottle of something red with lunch, so was still quite tipsy when I arrived for dinner at the Palais de McCracken after a half-hour nap at home. The lamb ala webber was so good. The conversation was better. T-bone introduced us to Colleen and we played Trivial Pursuit and sat around talking about which films and tv shows were accurate reflections of our lives. My head hit the pillow somewhere around half-midnight.
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