Crikey, that week flew past fairly quickly…! Also, my apologies for the lack of photos in this fairly lengthy post – I've just shifted my site to a new server and I haven't quite ironed all the bugs out yet. This also explains the slightly abnormal number of backslashes in some of the paragraphs.

I really hope that everyone reading this wants to hear about the rest of my farewell party, because that's what I'm a-gonna be writing about !!

I think I crawled into bed (and by “bed”, I mean *couch*) at about 4:30 on the first evening, thinking that I'd done a reasonable job of pacing myself, not drinking too much, and that I may in fact make it through the weekend alive !

On Saturday I was woken up by a phonecall from Father Dearest, wanting to know how to burn DVD\'s. I think I managed to get rid of him in my half-wakeful state, and then elected to get up anyway. With the help of Spiro I cleaned up the living room (not exaclty a herculean task, because all that had to be done was to pick up the empty bottles, the pistachio shells, and put all the glasses out in the sink), and then proceeded out to The Voodoo Lounge for breakfast. Indeed, if there's ANYTHING I'm gonna miss, it'll be that Breville grill of mine – the PERFECT appliance for cooking batchelor chow.

ANYWAY, by about 2pm the house had attracted a fairly healthy brace of visitors, including Rob the Magnificent, Wayne, a fairly bemused Dylan who had come in search of people with Mighty Hangovers, The Great Bevanos, and probably a few others (recollection of the event is sketchy at best). We mooted all kinds of wondrous philosophical points, such as whether pulling nasal hair out was like a big game of Ker-Plunk, and if you got just the right one then your brain would slide out. This indeed was how the Egyptians used to do it.

Mike & Cath dropped in with their wedding photos – which was pretty cool – and I think from memory Pat & Jules rocked in as well, bearing 2 mighty platters of cold meat & cheese from Pat\'s parents\' neighbours\' daughter\'s 21st (note careful placement of apostrophes there).

One slightly strange event from Saturday was the arrival of the weird old italian guy.

Mike & I have this old guy who lives locally who comes to collect our empty bottles. In actual fact, it turns out there's not one old guy, but three. 2 of them take the bottles, and the third picks the apples off our apple tree. I didn't realise there were 2 bottle guys, and I think there's a bit of competition there, so hopefully we haven't sparked off an old-guy turf war or anything. ANYWAY, what happened was, we were sitting out the back, enjoying a brewski or 3 and debating the cutting issues of the day, when the weird old guy appeared at the back door (meaning he'd wandered in through the front door). He looked around and asked in his broken English, “Who's the boss ? Who's the boss?”. I pointed him at Mike (being the leasee now), and the guy made his way over and grabbed Mike's hand, shaking it enthusiastically, on the brink of tears. It took a second to work out what was going on, but then I realised he must have seen the big box of bottles out the front! He subsequently left, came back, bagged the bottles up, and took them away… and I wouldn't be surprised to see him getting about in a new BMW in the next week or so.

Things eventually cranked up again and Saturday night evolved into a fairly well-attended hoot. I think from (vague) memory I headed off to bed at about 5am, leaving Chelsea, Fluffy, Lieutenant Bullshit and Wayne out in the Voodoo Lounge.

Sunday morning started with another fryup (thank god for that Breville, or my digestive tract would be a shattered mess), and at 10:30 the first drink was cracked for Bundy Sundy. The bottle collection didn't seem as big, although by that time a bit of nostalgia was possibly kicking in. We pretty much spent the whole day out in the Voodoo Lounge, interrupted only by having to go in and cue another dodgy CD up.

Again, Sunday presented the house with a good variety of visitors – Kathy brought Shaye along, and Craig & Sally brought Trinity along… If I had offspring I\'d think twice about taking them to an event called Bundy Sundy. But SERIOUSLY it was great to see them, as well as everyone else who came along.

Right, so anyway, to cut a medium length story shorter and thereby remove all the bits which may be in the slightest bit interesting: We sat around all Sunday arvo, drinking Bundy and talking crap, and I think the last person left at about 9pm. Mike started getting emotional at my moving out as it finally hit him that I was going, largely triggered by Patrick taking my 68cm TV and surround sound unit to look after. I came to the conclusion that I may have followed in Billy Connolly's footsteps and drunk my earthly allotment of booze, and would probably never drink again. I also discovered that my Mum really likes Bundy & Cola, which was unexpected.


In synopsis, I had an absolutely awesome farewell party, and if it wasn't for the fact I'm leaving the country in about a week I'd consider throwing another one. Thanks to everyone who came along, or emailed/called to say they couldn't make it – it was really cool to see such an excellent turnout.

Extra special thanks to Spiro and to Fi for helping me throughout the weekend with getting stuff ready, cleaning up, and just being damn legends. And of course to Mike, for agreeing to let me (ab)use the house.

And now, finally, the moment that nobody's been waiting for – a picture of Dogleg Dave's arse. Sorry to inflict that on you, but he insisted.

2004-04-20 : Day Two – It really seemed like a good idea at the time…
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