* Apologies for the severe lack of photographs in this post – haven’t seen any party pics yet, can’t download pics from my phone.
Saturday night – my birthday party. I will admit that on Saturday morning, I wasn’t looking forward to it. I’d been working so hard, doing so much preparation, and I wasn’t sure if I had enough food, or if the games would work, and I was stressing and wondering why the hell I decided to do this. In retrospect, it ended up being good although I do have to stop organising my own parties – someone else should do that, right?
Anyhoo, the food worked out well and people complimented the pretty spread (any table with butterfly cakes and fairy bread is going to look GREAT). We didn’t play all the party games – first was my version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, which became Pin the Man-Boobs on Fabio. The best thing about the game? I now own a metre high poster of Fabio *sigh* There was cheating, and I was pleased to see at least one book land on Fabio’s crotch. Next was pass the parcel, with several parcels going. Each round consisted of a challenge. I think my favourite was the put clothes on race. Kaaron Warren’s daughter won the story telling challenge and she was delighted with her girlie makeup.
My Marmee made (at my request) a teddy-bear cake, and it was fabulous – a gluten-free mudcake, with fluffly blue icing. My Marmee is a very talented woman – she also in just a couple of weeks pulled together a fantastic quilt for me, cleverly done with hints of blue and gold for the mighty Parramatta Eels. I scored quite well on the present front – a copy of Queen Singstar (which I believe I’ll give a burl tonight), plants, scents, beautiful bookmarks and from my sister Annette, tickets to see RocKwiz live.
Onto last night – RocKwiz. I have more than a little girl-crush on Julia Zemiro, so was looking forward to this. To our delight, Annette and I had fabulous seats – seven rows back, directly in front – eyelevel with the drumkit, basically. I could have, if I’d pushed it, ended up on stage for the find a contestant rounds – the woman next to me went instead, and she came fifth and scored a fantastic bag. There was so much cheering and happiness that my throat was gone before the show itself started properly.
The woman next to me (Chantelle) said she’d seen Peter Garrett backstage, so there was hopes of him ripping out a bit of the Oils but no, he just officially declared the tour open (this was the first night). Then there they were – Peter ‘Lucky’ Luscombe, Mark Ferrie, James Black, Dugald, Brian Nankervis and Julia, who looked fantastic. The artists playing were Attalita from Magic Dirt and Tim Rogers from You Am I.
All was fun and lovely and great, and then in the middle of round one, Brian announced a performance by none other than John Paul Young. The crowd erupted as this diminutive man came out and proceeded to tear the house up with ‘Love is in the air’, complete with the shuffling sort of leg moves and rocking the body that I remember from Countdown. I didn’t realise until this moment that my life wouldn’t be complete until I heard JPY sing that song live. Lucky it just happened.
A new round called Contestant Karoake saw two brave souls sing first Holiday then Khe Sanh. And then at some point, Clare Bowditch came on to sing her latest single, The Start of War, only her Casio keyboard wouldn’t work and she stood there and sang a lovely little song about the trials and tribulations of technology before it got going and she could sing and wow! The song was incredible and I’ve not bought it, and the last album she put out and I’m becoming a Clare Bowditch fan.
Then today, I finished the proofs of The Secret Ones! Woo hoo! So they will go in the mail and tonight, I will celebrate again. With wine. And a bit of Queen (if I can find the microphones). To reward myself, I've pre-ordered my copies of Scary Kisses. What, you haven't done yours yet? Shame. http://www.indiebooksonline.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=90
