Happy Two Day Hangover Day

The day after New Years Day is a public holiday in NZ, which is a nice touch. It's sort of a tacit understanding that the workforce needs a good two days to get over a big night on the turps, particularly the over 30's who are basically the only productive members of the workforce anyway, but that's another entry in our burgeoning file marked 'Generation Y Are Shit At Everything.' Courtesy the vagaries of the calendar this year the public holiday for the day after New Years will be on the 4th, straight after the public holiday for New Years itself which will be on the 3rd. Meanwhile NZ's national day (or as near to one as NZ gets) Waitangi Day, which also falls on a weekend, doesn't get a holiday-in-lieu, which is a bucket of arse. Unless you view the day-after-New-Years as a more significant moment in nation building than Waitangi Day, which depends entirely on how much of a Nationals-voting white-bread arsehatted bigot you are.

Anyhoo. You find Your Correspondent using Two Day Hangover Day (as I feel Jan 2 should be properly titled) for the purposes specified on the label, i.e. avoiding direct sunlight and rehydrating like a bastard. Seems disproportionate given that I only had a couple of beers while making dinner. And a few glasses of wine on Twitter. And some vodkas. And some more beers. And some more after that. And some Baileys, for some ungodly fucking reason. And then... possibly some other stuff. My recollection is poor after about 2am. Thankfully my Twutterances remain on record, including such insightful gems as 'Royally c*nted' and 'I'd hang in there for you Qlders, but you could just adopt daylight savings like a fucking civilised state already #justsaying' and a whole bunch of neolithic rock song lyrics as though they were somehow profound. Ah, bless. Needless to say I was far more unwell on Jan 1 than at any stage during my 'highly emetogenic chemotherapy'. Last time I was that poorly was after a night of unfeasible drinking with @babycakesjase and @moff01 in Newtown a few months back, but that's another story.


The story I meant to tell was that of my history with New Years Eves, and how they're usually more miss than hit in terms of decent nights out (or in, for that matter). The last 4-5 years on Planet Parenthood have been the expected write-off, of course, but to be honest it weren't too flash a record beforehand. The mid-to-late-90s usually saw us congregate at a mate's farm to drink around a bonfire and crank the tunes - Triple J up until Mix-Up-o'-clock, then the preferences of whoever was nearest the stereo at the time, up until dawn where it was usually AC/DC Live at bowel-quaking volume. Usually courtesy the famous Dawso, who was usually the only bastard still up other than me at that hour. Our annual tradition was to split a case of beer - Reschs Real the first year, which was my first ever hangover (no fucking surprises there), then Uncle Ted or something in years to follow - which he traditionally monstered two-thirds of.

One of the better New Years I had was 1999/2000, where we followed the Captain up to Brisbane to watch a covers band made up of some mates of his from Lismore play the Plough Inn on Southbank. Good tunes, good mates, river-launched fireworks seemingly exploding at touching distance, managing to avoid being apocalypsed by the Millennium Bug (though $5 Carlton Colds in plastic bottles seemed to be priced from some distant point in the future) and seeing the first sunrise of the new year (if not, technically, the new decade/century/millennium) through a gap in the clouds over Kangaroo Point. Good times. So good, in fact, that a month later I moved to Brisbane, to the same St Lucia sharehouse we'd crashed at for New Years. Like the guy from the old Remington shavers ads, I liked the NYE so much I moved there.

Which doesn't explain why I was in Sydney for the following year's New Years, or why we went and got thoroughly trolleyed on Dec 30th such that we were still quite ruined on the big night, very slowly sipping beers in the VIP area at Dawes Point Reserve under the southern approaches to the Harbour Bridge waiting for the explodey stuff. A friend of a friend had both the tickets and better plans, so we (myself and the King of Seed) scored an up-close to the millennial pyrotechnics free-of-charge. Almost completely wasted on us, as we were ourselves almost completely wasted. Which is kind of the story of NYE for me. Overdoing it on NYE-Eve and limping through the ensuing festivities like an old dog looking for a place to die. Right up to the last one before Planet Parenthood, 2005-06 on the Goldie with Mr and Mrs Moff. Didn't even make it out of the house. Not sure if any of us even made it to midnight. Probably likewise for most of the NYEs which preceded it, given I can't remember the fuckers.

Still there was one fun one. Drunken Irish postdoc from our lab (and his English soon-to-be-fiancee) threw a bash at his apartment on Highgate Hill. Place was packed full of quality peeps, drinks and tunes (though a bit too much Franz Ferdinand for my liking, this being 2004-05), a view of the fireworks from the balcony, and a CityCat back home across the river at 3am - a quality NYE experience. I liked the NYE so much I... moved to New Zealand.

At the risk of inviting the inevitable fail that is posing a question at the end of a blog post - anyone else found that NYE sucks more often than it doesn't?

The Doctor is OUT. For a pie and a Powerade.