Columne the Seventhe

You have no idea of the unparalleled beauty I'm wallowing in right now. We're staying in a whitewashed house deep in the Huon Valley. The river is a mere ten metres away, and rolling hills topped with magical forests rise up around us.

This is deep in apple orchard country.

Last night as we sat engaged in ritualistic familial card game warfare, the scent of pulped apples floated so heavily on the breeze I could taste it in my red wine. A few days ago, I climed one of the hills and looked out across the rows of apple trees, cattle grazing happily around them. This is truly one of the most beautiful places on earth.

Of course, living in beauty appears to have bypassed many of the locals. Empty bottles and cans are scattered along the side of the road, crushed and weather worn. Yesterday as I was walking, a car drove past me and threw a half full UDL can out of its passenger window. I simply cannot understand how people can live in a place like this and treat it so abysmally.

We're going to Port Arthur on Wednesday where I've convinced the fam to go on the ghost tour. I'm the most excited about it even though I'm also the one most likely to wet my pants through sheer fright and have a panic attack in the middle of the tour. I love to be scared.

The trip hasn't been without its low points. Our holiday house erupted the other night when, after imbibing a tad too much liquor, my sister allowed the tension that had been brewing between us all day to erupt into an all out enemy attack. Screamed the house down she did. I went to bed crying, mainly because I was so disappointed to have been party to an incident that might have made my dad regret bringing us here.

All is well now, but it's led me to ponder the deeper psychological warfare present in families. In my family especially, the children resort directly to type and battle and bitch for the parent's undivided love and attention. It frustrates me that we're unable to behave like adults around each other. I think wryly of a future when we all have children of our own, and are likely to still behave like petulant infants whenever we get together. How tiresome.

For now, I'm trying to convince them not to make us go to Hobart for NYE tonight. Frankly, I can't imagine many things more hideous than NYE in the city. Crowds are dumb.

So without further ado, here is the article I wrote for yesterday's Sunday Mail. I normally like to wait a few days to republish them, but it's quite fitting.

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first published 30/12/2007
the Sunday Mail



The older I get, the more I realise how truly few things there are in this world that offer a 100% guarantee of predictability. The first three that spring to mind are the obvious ones - birth, death and taxes. But to these I add a fourth, and that is the incontrovertible reality that New Year's Eve promises to massively suck.

Despite the incredible suckfest that is NYE, it's still widely (and erroneously) touted as being THE social event of the year. From a statistician's perspective, this is probably not far from the truth. In terms of drunken numbers in attendance, it's only eclipsed by the hordes of dribbling alcoholics who flood the streets each year for Crappypalooza, otherwise known as Clipsal.

The tragedy of NYE is really how it so crudely reflects the innate sense of hope we mere mortals have. Years upon years of being disappointed at putting the year to bed have failed to convince us of its uselessness as a social date. Memories of trudging through the city at 4am with thousands of other shoeless, glassy eyed revellry refugees trying to hail a taxi collide with please-let-that-moment-be-erased-from-the-hard-drive-of-my-brain thoughts of scrambling for midnight kisses with only five minutes to spare. Before you know it, your plans for a magical evening have been doused by the suffocating stench of liberally applied cans of Lynx and Impulse all competing to find a mate.

Yes, much like the ubiquitous tree falling in the forest, NYE only really happens when three parts desperation meets two parts tequila.

Yet despite being riddled with embarrassing and/or tedious recollections courtesy of the Ghost of NYE Past, we stumble blindly towards each calendar's culmination with desperate hope in our hearts that somehow this year, this night will! be! different!

NYE will never be different. It will never be fun, and it will always, always disappoint. FACT.

If you don't wake up with a hangover, you'll feel like you didn't party hard enough. The very nature of NYE requires you to issue a swift middle finger salute to any flimflam medical advice regarding drink consumption. In addition to this, you're practically resigning yourself to 365 days of social bankruptcy if you don't find someone to slobber all over you with beer breath come the dinging of that midnight bell.

If you do wake up with a hangover, you'll feel as if someone microwaved your brain and is at this very moment slowly stirring your nuked cerebal juices with a wooden spoon. You'll also feel humiliated by the invariable tawdriness of your behaviour as it's safe to say you either had a fight with someone, or tried to slip your hands down their pants in a public place. Maybe both.

Unfortunately, despite the overwhelming evidence against it, NYE can hardly be avoided. People who don't celebrate NYE are humbug and strange. They probably hate people having fun, and will go out of their way to ruin it. They may even be nihilists, which is like a terrorist but worse. They have never kissed a person in their entire life, and they don't even like to drink beer. Quite frankly, it's Un-Australian.

Chances are, if you're a humourless hater like me, you're just going to have to grin and bear it all the way through the dawning of 2008. Your best opportunity for success here is to track down a good, local house party and camp there all night. Take your own box of wine so you'll be in nobody's way, and try not to kiss anyone who's consumed anything remotely close to more than their body weight in alcohol, thus rendering them intoxicated. I believe the medical term for this is 'sherlackered'.

And for Dumbledore's sake, don't even think about going anywhere near the city. You're trying to avoid the tenth circle of Hell here, not bolster its tourism trade.

Happy New Year!


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Well, quite.

Peace out (and to my amigos in Adelaide, enjoy sneaking into private school pools tonight. You lucky devils, you.)