I spent Christmas Eve recovering after a big night out on the 23rd (with a precious friend who’d been awake for 36 hours on pills (as you do) and Crystal Meth (silly fool) and all the fun and dramas associated with a night out with someone who’s tweaking). Had a good dance which is the main thing!
During the afternoon of the 24th I went to Farros Bros fish shop in Sydenham, which is positively the best place in Sydney to buy very very fresh seafood at market prices without the hassle of going to the fish markets. After queuing outside the shop for about 50 minutes, i was finally in and out with fish, prawns, scallops and marinara mix all for less than $50. The rest of the evening was spent geting food ready to dad’s place on xmas day, and feeling sorry for myslef after the previous night. Unfortunately I was too wasted to go to the MCC Christmas Eve Service at the Sydney town Hall. Apart from when I was in Japan, it’s the first time I’ve missed it in many many years 
Around 10:00 on the 25th baba and i loaded up the rented car to go out to Dad’s place. In my 31 years on the planet, it’s the first time we had a big christmas at his place. Old family friends came over and my kind of surrogate cousins and all their boyfriends and girlfriends. They’re all in their 20s, but spent the whole day playing computer games on dad’s new big TV (a completely unnecessary and extravagent present to himself). Aparently the game machine was called a wee….I was somewhat intrigued when one of them invited me to play wee games in the living room. There are certainly clubs and saunas where i know that sort of stuff goes on….but in dad’s living room??
Anyhoo, we had a BBQ and a Turkey and pavlova and sponge cake and mince pies for dessert. It was a nice hybrid xmas lunch.
On Boxing day baba and i had a bunch of friends (aka the Japanese stoners) over for an evening BBQ. Lots more food, too much grog &c.
Tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn we’re hopping in a car and driving up to Lismore where we’re staying for 5 nights over New Year. The main event of course is the party Tropical Fruits which is a biggish queer party but still has a nice alternative, underground feel. We’re staying at a fascinating looking Artist/hippy/new age B&B in a village called The Channon half way between Lismore and Nimbin. (turn off the highway at woodburn and follow your nose and the funny haze into the hills….).
Happy new Year dear Readers. Hopefully a drug crazed truckie won’t drive us off the Pacific Hwy and we’ll be back in one piece on 3 Jan.
A colleague at work (who I affectionately call crazy Jan…because her name is Jan and she’s positively bonkers) kindly bought me a bottle of the abovementioned wine a few months ago. I finally decided to open it on the weekend. In all honesty it didn’t do much for me.
It’s a “big” Shiraz. 14.5% alcohol and chewy. Red berry fruit is fairly dominant and a fair bit of spice….but not delicate cool-climate Shirz, spice….it unsubtle, slightly questionable, bain maree indian takeaway spice. Perhaps the 2003 is still too young, because I found that the alcohol really dominated the palate. It’s not a heavily oaked style, so there weren’t those secondary, woody characteristics which often help to carry a big wine when it’s young. It wasn’t a bad wine, but i would have expected more from the penfolds Bin range….even from this, one of the most junior members.
…but you wouldn’t know it. This rain and muggy-but-not-really-hot weather is pissing me off.
Mind you summer brings good things regardless of what the weather’s doing. for example, theres the incongruity of the pine tree sitting in the corner of the muggy living room covered in balls and lights. (I f*cking hate Christmas…always have, even when i was a kid…even when i was a bible thumping Christian….something to do with being an only child perhaps, or just the stupidity of celebrating a northern hemisphere pagan festival, dressed up as Christianity, amidst an orgy of capitalism, in the height of summer).
But summer also brings good things. Only a couple of weeks and we’re hitting the road, bound for Lismore to do Tropical Fruits for NYE. I dislike NYE in Sydney almost as much as i hate Christmas, so being almost 1000km up the coast in a hippy town with thousands of queer folk dancing and having a bacchanalian good time will be just the ticket. Regular readers will remember my post about legal drugs called head candy. i bought “neuro blast” pills from the same company for NYE…they’re supposed to be more like coke, so we’ll see. (Mind you i’ve never done coke….seeing as I’m not a lawyer, stockbroker or a banker, nor did i go to a private school…so i won’t be able to comment on whether these pills are anything like cocaine or not).
Other good summer things are that we now have festival guides for the Sydney festival and for the Mardi Gras festival. So many plays, concerts and exhibitions to see and so little time, and so much money to spend.
I just wish the sun would come out so that I could pop down to the beach.
A very very good program just finished on the ABC. “Rampant: How a City Stopped a Plague recounted the history of HIV/AIDS in Sydney and how it has been fought on three fronts: by poofters, by junkies and by whores.
From the early days when the disease emerged in Sydney, it was the very communities most adversely affected who took the fight against the disease to the streets, to the media and to government. Rather than preaching abstinance, graphic safe sex ads targeted gay men. While brothels were still illegal, enterprising prostitues and brothel owners boldly marketed themselves as offering only safe sex. While Nancy was telling us to just say no, the government was (at first discretely) providing the resources for dealers to be given clean needles to distribute to their clients when they bought their fix. (Following the lead of trials established – somewhat incongruously – by the Thatcher government).
We were enormously lucky to have left-leaning governments and open minded health ministers who were willing to work and cooperate with groups at the coal face. The govt could fund these groups, without being seen by the bland hoards behind their suburban picket fences as endorsing pornographic ads, decriminalised prostitution or drug use.
The other huge key to success of course was the grim reaper TV ad campaign which brought HIV/AIDS inside those picket fences and into every living room in the country. It caused fear, it caused concern, it made people talk.
The statistics at the end of the program surprised me:
+In 25 years there has not been a single confirmed case of a man being infected with HIV as a direct result of sex with a female prostitute.
+An estimated 1% of i.v. drug users in Australia are HIV positive. In America where needle exchange programs are taboo and are seen as giving in to the “war on drugs” the infection rate among iv drug users is 20%
+Sydney was one of the first major cities in the world to see a decline in new infection rates among its gay male population. The general trend is still stable/downward.
