Last Night's Fun

All the bacchanalian excesses of old New Year's seemed to be enjoyed on the Eve, going into the Day, but not this year. Sitting in with cocoa and slippers (well, not exactly, an absolutely stonking bottle of six year old claret, and glad rags on in case anyone invited me to a party at the last minute), it was a pleasure to see the new year in with a new and vastly improved cuddly Kylie on Jools Holland's Hootenannay thrash on the electric television. I much prefer Kylie's new real-woman's bum to the bony, much-photographed affair that helped the good woman back into stardom this century.

Aaah, Kylie; takes me back to my first visit to Australia, when they were celebrating the Bicentennial in '88. We found out the shocking news that 'Charlene' had upped and left Neighbours whilst the good old UK audience, mostly male, were getting lumpy trousers every time Kylie rubbed grease into those gorgeous cheeks, wriggled into her boiler suit and played toyfully with her ratchet spanner. The real shocker on that trip was finding out that Prisoner Cell Block H had ceased production, whilst it was still cult viewing and very much alive in the UK, albeit about four years behind. Nasty Ferguson, or the 'Freak' as her customers knew her as was already doing the post-Prisoner chart show rounds there, and the programme wasn't feted anywhere near as much as in the UK.

Other highlights of that trip were staying in the Spike Milligan Suite of the Woy Woy Motel. Woy Woy is so good they named it twice. Also, nearly drowning in the undertow on the beach at Terrigal, where we also saw a minibus that without a hint of sarcasm declared itself to be the property of 'The Australian League of Old Bastards'.

The only downside of that trip was the pommie-bashing that we were exposed to, on two occasions. I was delighted to find that when we returned two years ago for Christmas 2005, we were treated with nothing but courtesy and friendliness. True, we were up in the tourist belt this time, in the unbelievably beautiful environs of Byron Bay, rather than the suburbs of Sydney, but it felt a different country, much more at ease with itself than first impressions. One thing I noted on the first trip and was glad to see had receded the second time was the use of the word 'Australian', sometimes in every sentence - the raw national pride of an emergent nation - usually on television, when the eponymous label was attached wherever possible. Example - the BBC introduces the weather forecast 'and here is the weather forecast'. The Aussie version was 'and now we have the weather for Australia tomorrow'. A silly example perhaps, but a real example. It was as though the more times one could say the word, the more one swore allegiance to the country, a bit like the very noticeable presence of the Stars & Stripes on every building in that country. Anyway, pleased to say that that facet of Australian self awareness seems to have given way to a more comfortable identity.

What wouldn't I give to be back on Tallow Beach right now, 45 degrees, up to my waist in the warm milk of the Pacific. The old SAD has really kicked in this winter, which was bound to happen having tasted the forbidden fruit of Winter Sun. Still, a few more winters at the grindstone for me yet.......


......which brings me back to Last Night's Fun. Not the excellent band from Sligo, but some of the music of that fair country, as last night we had our weekly traditional music session at our local pub. As the evening started with an excellent curry with my good friend Simon Styles, Barrow's principal penny whistle manufacturer, good cheer had already started flowing, and between then and being emptied out of the pub at 1am, I realised that both my fiddle playing and detox programme had gone to hell in a handbasket. Having successfully retoxed, my head has been pounding all day. A half-life of six hours is a new record for resolution-busting for me.