Sunday, August 28, 2005

swell party


Pic shows Annabel and Mia as we were walking down Liberty Street en route to Annabel's birthday party in Sydney yesterday evening. Behind them was a boy on a bicycle who found it hilarious to refer to his bicycle as his sausage. See I leave Sydney for a few years and the general tenor goes way down.

The party had its ups and downs. Most definitely the down for me was the part where I gave a truly terrible 'speech' in Annabel's honour. In my memory it was actually totally bereft of content, I am not sure what I said (and don't want to be reminded). It didn't help that I came on after various others who were bound to blow me off the stage, notably (but by no means exclusively) Jim Betts who had prepared a poem which was one of the funniest things I'd heard in some time. My role was to sum up but I was too drunk and panic-stricken to do even that. Anyway, I'm not going to wallow, and it's not like I expected my 'speech' to be any good; I had absolutely no idea what I was going to say, and that is probably one reason why I was unable to say anything (others later informed me that it was horrendous, so it's not just me). Luckily for my reputation Annabel did a proper summing up saying very kindly that meeting Michelle and, a year or so later, me had saved her from marrying a paedophile judge and living in Castlecrag. Later quizzing revealed she had no particular paedophile judge in mind.

I hope my problem is that I can't sum people up. Especially someone as important to me as Annabel. Anyway, I am not going to give the speech here. It was never conceived. However admittedly that would have been a good way to start. I know I'm not alone in this but I don't find alcohol conducive to great energetic flights of fancy. Some people do. It really stops me being creative. I can't type if I'm drunk and I can't play drums even after one beer. Anyway, I'm not complaining. Much.

Otherwise, it mostly went pretty well. It was at Alice's house which is a staggeringly good-looking place and there was a lot of food and conversation. We were there from 6 or was it 7? till 4 and so I really should remember more but the things I do remember are not for public repeating (not that they're scandalous or anything but you know...) Oh, I did hear that the INXS Rock Star show is outrageously terrible (as indeed are INXS these days) but nevertheless compelling. I had a brief discussion about whether Howard would ever redeem himself in retirement like Fraser ostensibly has (the answer is no; I finished reading God Under Howard on the way up on the plane so I was full of bile over his underhand tactics but I was unable really to express it). Mia and I were mainly drinking vodka, and I guess I did get pretty drunk because I went for a short walk with Stephen and about 3 am and when we got back I couldn't make any sense of the layout of the backyard, where I'd been for the previous 6 hours or so. By that time I hadn't had any alcohol for a couple of hours.

We stayed at Annabel's sumptuous flat, about which more later.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fiddlsticks, it was an absolutely great speech and thank you very much for making it.

David Nichols said...

It was nonsense, but thank you for saying otherwise.

Anonymous said...

it was fine-you just seemed to get distracted half way through! Could have been something to do with all the shouting

Anonymous said...

why were people shouting? what happened?

Anonymous said...

Were you there, Annabel?

Anonymous said...

I know I was shouting.

Anonymous said...

David Nichols is a fine writer and a great man

Anonymous said...

it was randall shouting mostly, something about leaving pets behind with Annabel???

weekend

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