Last night in the city

I really must stress how much of a miracle it is that I’m writing this, considering that this morning’s wake up was accompanied by feelings of impending doom. In other news, I’ve made it to beautiful Dunsborough safely, but to say that it was not plain sailing is a huge understatement. It is not often I lose the ability to sit upright, but this morning was one of those rare occasions and I have a sneaky suspicion spending last night in the company of my dear host family might have something to do with it. Vic text me earlier in the week inviting me to a festive reunion dinner at the Billingham pad in South Perth and I jumped at the chance to revisit my old home and catch up with my favourite family of expats.

Walking through the city and over the bridge that I rode over every morning for the first three months here brought back happy memories and I couldn’t wait to see everyone again, particularly Jamie who’s just got back from a month in England. I stepped out of the elevator into a very familiar scene; Vic running around like a blue-arsed fly (a famous Tim Stephens phrase), John doing some very questionable Dad dancing to Christmas tunes and Jamie’s efforts at help stretching to grating/eating the cheese. There was one very important addition to note amongst the hugs; the Billinghams 21-year-old daughter, Lauren, is here from Auckland for Christmas. After introducing herself, the first thing she did was pour me a very large glass of white wine: I liked her instantly. As we all caught up with one another (I mostly moaned about how I hate living by myself and miss our games of Canasta and sailing trips), I gave them a hand preparing dinner and generally soaked up the atmosphere of us all being together again. To my surprise, some other familiar faces turned up; Prachie, my darling fellow Homestay and Philippino cooking whizz, Denai, one half of the Greek couple that replaced me as homestays fresh from her waitressing job in the city, Catriona and her lovely little old-man dog Anzac, and Shelly and Simon, friends of the Billinghams who we did a quiz with back in October and who bought me champagne on my birthday-eve. All-in-all, a very pleasant group of people who I am rather fond of.

Christmas fairies!

Jamie and Catriona deep in intellectual conversation

The wine continued to flow as a sumptuous feast was served up; I spent dinner trying to avoid a grilling from Vic and Catriona on my “Aussie sugar Daddy” and getting to know Lauren, who for the record is an absolutely brilliant girl. She made a Eton mess/Brandy Snaps hybrid for dessert, adding pudding queen to reasons to love her. She currently lives in New Zealand with her boyfriend James, who she met working at the national television company. She’s also trying to get her kids’ TV show, Fairy Luna, to hit the big time; take a look at all its adorableness here and tell all your friends with kids to give it a go. Lauren plays Luna, of course, and watch out for Vic with a cameo role as the wise fairy! Her and James are going through a weird patch, so she decided to spend Christmas with her family and even has a few job interviews while she’s here. It would be so great if she moved to Perth as I’d like to recreate this first meeting on a regular basis but without the stinking hangover.

Prachie, Lauren and Denai

After we’d been fed, we kicked back on the balcony with yet more wine before Catriona suggested we head over to her place in the CBD for a game of pool and some more alcohol for good measure. We jumped in the cars, driven by tee-total John (he got so drunk at his stag do that he and Vic had to cancel their wedding, no biggie) and Catriona, who’s Scottish and can therefore drink as much as she likes and drive. While we were poured extra large vodka and oranges, us girls ventured out of the shared games room to the pool area for a paddle in the Jacuzzi. Luckily, none of us fell in, although Anzac did take an accidental dip in the pool in his old age and Catriona had to fish him out, which we all found hilarious once we were sure he wasn’t drowning. The pool skills weren’t overly successful to begin with and only went downhill as we became more intoxicated, with John being just about the only half-competent player; I vaguely remember Denai, who had never played pool before, beating Jamie and I.

The wise decision to go out in the city must have been made somewhere around that point, because the next thing I knew we were climbing out of the car in Northbridge. Northbridge has a “vibrant” nightlife, shall we say, but you do have to deal with the possibility of being stabbed. We found a little bar with a live band playing and Lauren bought a round of Long Island Ice Teas to the tune of $65, so that’s Perth for you. We met a strange midget man who gave us reindeer ears and a glowstick in return for listening to him talk rubbish for a few minutes, which was nice of him. From there, we stumbled down into the city and entered the first busy bar we came across. We were just getting into our ciders and a very crude game of Rock, Paper, Scissors/Truth or Dare when Lauren commented on the abundance of Irish blokes, which lead us to the conclusion that it was in fact an Irish bar. What followed was several hours of us two fending off extremely drunk Irishmen and Jamie being horrified at them trying to touch up his sister. At the thought of my very long, very early bus ride the next morning, the sensible girl inside me must have said goodbye to the Billinghams and hauled my butt into a taxi around midnight, giving me a grand total of five hours sleep before my public transport mission. On the bright side, I had a great night with the Billinghams and it was an awesome way to spend my last night in Perth for a while.

My undoing

However, when my alarm went off at 6am, it was very difficult to think of the “bright side”. I’m sure I’ve said it before and will say it again, but I think that’s the worst I’ve felt after a night out ever. At first, I genuinely considered spending the day in bed and booking another bus because I wasn’t confident that I could stand, let alone make it out of the house. Why do we do it to ourselves?! After abandoning all hope of navigating the journey to the bus station via public transport and booking a taxi, I took a shower (via a short stint lying on the bathroom floor) and forced myself to take in fluids. A combination of hydration and sitting in the fresh air meant that my condition improved exponentially and I was slightly more mobile when the taxi pulled up at 7:30.

Whatever improvements to my health that had occurred thus far proved futile when I arrived at the public transport centre in East Perth, where I think I would have felt less out of place if I’d been unconcious. It’s common knowledge that public transport is the scum of the earth’s territory, but this took the biscuit. As I watched all your textbook weirdos roaming around (toothless woman in her 50s with a bottle of vodka and a small child, aboriginal gentleman with food in his beard attempting to smoke on-board, total raving nutjob screaming and waving his arms around who turned out to actually be working there), I took a moment to wonder whether there could be some system in place to allow normal people trying to leave the city to travel separately to those who clearly belong in some kind of asylum, but no such luck. Fortunately, my coach was psychopath-free, bar one stinky German bloke who kept trying to spark up a conversation in the queue, and I was left to listen to my music in peace. I was also in relative comfort, with a double seat to myself, until we pulled into Mandurah and an old lady hopped on next to me. Despite her possessing no immediately obvious insane qualities, she turned out to have the next worst habit in my opinion: She described everything she did out loud to herself. That really gets my goat; if I didn’t love Jordan Burnard like a brother, I probably would have murdered him by now. Four hours of trying to block her voice out of my head by turning my music up was not condusive to my headache and time dragged on, but eventually the ocean came into view and we pulled up in Dunsborough, where Jess’ lovely face was waiting to meet me. I'm so relieved to be out of the city and only one sleep away from feeling human again, although the stack of alcohol in the house suggests that won't last. Let the real holidays begin!