Pickin' Tan Bark Out of My Cardi

Before signing in here I noticed a headline on another page that said "new year, new start" to which I can only say "pft". Why start afresh when one can revisit the past?



After a deeply inauspicious start (recruitment drives for artistic Catholicism on NYE anyone? Anyone? Oh, no, didn't think so) and a long and grumpy march from North Fitzroy to Sydney Rd I was resigning myself to a new years spent bitching with Nologic and fighting off well intentioned bogans in stripy shirts.

Instead I found myself in a car with five people I didn't know being whisked off to the crazed night of fuckedness that is That Party By The Fitzroy Pools. Ah. That party. Last new years eve I remember walking into a sea of people with eskies and picnic rugs making me think of a hardcore, twentysomethings only version of carols by candlelight except instead of champagne and pate and small children it was liquor and drugs and groping on the grass. So you can see why I thought it was just like carols by candlelight.



Now I'm not proud of this but it's a fact. As TheWedge once pointed out to me, when it comes to Spewtown I'm the Mayor. I'm the Governor General, the Queen, the figurehead of Spewtown. Summer especially seems to bring out the spew within me - something about not eating very much but drinking a lot makes my stomach a tad delicate. There is also one person I know who can, almost invariably, make me vomit. Romantic no? I see him and then I have to run to the toilet. Except new years eve this year I didn't make it. I wonder about the state of the world and the absence of moral centres etc when a girl can chuck up twice in front of a multitude of people (including the boy's best friend), run off to wipe it off and come back and... well lets just say for any of my friends who remember last new years it was like that but on tan bark so not as roll-y.

On the way home there was attempts at tango in my favourite park which, earlier on this year I had bid a mournful goodbye to all "oh park, you sooth my troubled mind and I will walk through you no more, adieu adieu" (obviously I am an idiot) and then I got to wear a hoodie and redecorate certain objects. And sleep badly.

And then I watched an incredibly shit episode of degrassi. And then an even worse 'Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Keira Knightly wears a hell-bad wig' and then I went back to bed. I love a slumberous household and I love a slow, slurred, couch-full new year’s day.

So last year I stumbled home at 11am to sit on my own couch and watch The West Wing and this year I didn't stumble out of that house until 11pm. Why not get the New Year off to a gentle start by pretending the last twelve months didn't really happen? And what did you do for new years?