Ten years gone

We begin, uncharacteristically, with gratuitous self-reference:

"Okay, so they’d renovated the function room. Okay, so the décor was markedly less vomitiferous and the carpet didn’t look like it’d been salvaged from the set of Don’s Party. But it was still the Bowlo, dammit. There were still dead things living in the beer lines and the bistro’s vol-au-vaunts were still made from animal entrails and vulcanized rubber. As ten year high school reunions went, it had been pretty run-of-the-mill. Of course, having attended none before or since my own, I’m basing my frame of reference solely on the acclaimed Hollywood documentaries Grosse Point Blank and Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion, but the fact that McCarthy and I didn’t get to (a) turn up in a thunderous Corvette with Fabulous Hair or (b) blow up a convenience store in a gun battle with a disfigured midget hitman meant that our own reunion was never going to cut it by comparison."

- In The Worst Possible Taste, 'The Parable of Glenn McGrath's Haircut'

The boys from Gasket were one-up on us, though. At least they got a ten year high school reunion. With the signature half-arsedness that characterized our year, noone could be bothered organizing one. There was, I'm told, an eleven year reunion, basically organized by and for the girls who'd hung around and bred with locals (cue Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses' 'You'll Do'). Organization went as far as putting an ad in the local paper. World of Bollocks Rural Correspondent AJ got an invite. I'm led to believe not even he could be arsed with it.

But bollocks to that, because there's only two reasons anyone actually wants to go to their ten year high school reunion. One, to laugh at the crappy lives the wankers you hated ended up making for themselves; and two, to try and cop off with the hot chick(s) from your year who weren't ever having a bar of you whilst In Uniform. And if that sort of miserable, small-minded shite is still motivating you a decade or more after leaving school, for fuck's sake get a hobby.

Like, erm, writing f'rinstance.

Truth is, we didn't really need any high school reunions. We had one, of the impromptu variety at least. Up until about five years ago, every year after we graduated and (mostly) left the area, at the Pacific Hotel in Yamba on Christmas Eve, for some strange reason either to do with the quantum strangeness of the universe or the wish to get out of the house and away from our families, there would be half our year, catching up over a few schooners. Usually the interesting half, at least. The half with the hot chicks. The other traditional school reunion - because most of my best mates are my oldest mates - is the Boxing Day BBQ, where it remains tradition to gather at the Yobbo Beach House to imbibe, talk bollocks, sacrifice burnt offerings to the gods, cast aspersions on the character, cognitive abilities and/or parentage of one Richard Ponting of Mowbray, Launceston, and then once the heat is gone from the day, bust out the prehistoric bat and the scientifically taped-up tennis balls for backyard (actually front-yard-of-neighbours-and-mostly-on-the-road) cricket, as discussed in previous media commitments.

And so this is Christmas. And has been for years. Sadly, not for much longer. The Yobbo Beach House, the only permanent sort of home I've known, will probably be retired from active duty (read 'filled with other people') by next Boxing Day. It's a big, rambling, two story place hidden amongst towering casuarinas, palms, paperbacks and the odd Moreton Bay fig, all of which were seedlings when my folks began building the place 35 years ago. (You can tell our place from aerial photos, it's the only house you can't find.) All of which means it's now getting well beyond their repair-and-maintenance capabilities, as it was always going to be eventually with advancing age and wear and tear. So this is probably the last Christmas here at the YBH, and the last Boxing Day BBQ (which, by our usual organizational logic, will be on the 27th. Don't ask.) But the Boxing Day BBQ will continue. Somewhere. Wherever there is beer to be drank, sausages to be incinerated, and cricket to be eviscerated (by word or by deed), you will find us. For we are the Pissheads of the Boxing Day BBQ. We are legion. And we are legend.

And we're coming to the Gabba on the 28th to shout rude things at Victorians. Be warned. Especially you fucking Victorians.

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.