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.