I am currently at home at 11:18PM on a Saturday night. I just spent like an hour sitting in my car outside of the gym on Hay St because I couldn’t decide if I was too tired to to the gym or not. Also with this blog I thought “I am feeling tired so should I just sleep?” That’s the trouble with weekends: you only have so much time to do things and often you are tired so you need to recover at some point. Anyway, I’m going to write this blog because I know I will like reading back on it later in the year.
Back to New Year’s Eve.
New Year’s Eve was at the same venue as last year so I had high hopes. This year I was also heading up to Market Grounds from a fairly empty Coogee house but this time I was actually ahead of schedule and had time to spare - perhaps this was my downfall. Stu gave me a lift to Murdoch Train Station so I could catch the train up to the city to meet Jas at like 830. This happened and we went to Belgium Beer Cafe for a few pre drinks. Perhaps an interesting moment was when we had tried to get into Emerson (old Carnegies) but the bouncer denied us because there supposedly was an event on. A solo middle aged man who was there also trying to gain entry, he said to us after we agreed with the bouncer that we should just grab a drink at the Belgian Beer Cafe across the road, the solo man said “(laughing) I’ll join you guys over there”, we laughed back and said “No worries”. Jas & I then entered the pub and lined up for our first drink and not more than 2 minutes later we noticed the solo man was standing behind us. Jas and I grabbed our drinks and walked over to a vacant table nearby; the man stood just behind us with his beer at first and then slowly moved to the vacant table only 3 metres from us, at this point Jas and I caught on that he was looking for someone to drink with. He then moved to another table a few meters away from us on our other side and now I could sense things were getting desperate for him and a few minutes after this he put down his 3/4 full pint on the table and walked right out... Jas looked at me and I was like “Oh man, he was wanting to join us, wasn’t he?” It’s a story that is very vivid and that barely touched beer that he left behind was hard for me to accept. Anyway Jas and I soon left and headed to Market Grounds and we were not sure if Kiel (had no idea if he was going to come) or Vesper would be meeting us there.
Market Grounds was busy but it didn’t appear to be as busy as it was last year and this perhaps was due to COVID restrictions from 6 months earlier. I didn’t feel as good as I did the year before and perhaps that was because I hadn’t gone to the gym as much and some of my clothes / toiletries were still in my unit in Jolimont, which I hadn’t been to since Christmas eve - I had left in a real hurry on 24/12 when I awoke from a nap and realised that I had to be in Coogee for our Christmas eve dinner. Perhaps that was on my mind and also arriving early means that there would be more time for me to drink which is not necessarily a preference of mine.
As the night progressed, KC and LV showed up and I was starting get drinking fatigue and stomach discomfort. Midnight hit and the crew was having a good time, I remember there were these two loose units which LV befriended and they bought us a few drinks from a wad of cash that they were holding. By this I was fatiguing so I left everyone around 1am and headed to the City West train station.
I arrived in Freo after the 25 or so minute train journey and noticed all of the tents at the park directly across the road, there was some noise etc and I later found out that this was the “Tent City” which kept appearing in the paper. I made my way down towards Notre Dame uni quickly you get away from this stuff (wasn’t in the mood to fight or confront), walked past the backpackers and soon made it. It was actually still lively here too. I took my shoes off and started walking bare feet.
I started my journey from Freo station maybe by 215, made it to the boat harbour about 15 minutes later and kept heading south to South Beach - this must have taken at least 40 minutes. South Beach was quiet but definitely a lot of backpackers and others still on the grass and in the car park. I walked past them and headed onto the cycle track. My feet needed some respite so once I got to the dog beach I headed onto the sand.
This was definitely peaceful and it was 330am by this time and I just wanted to get home. The shiftiest part of this was when I was walking along the beach past the power plant, there is a narrow walkway and there just so happened to be another person walking in the opposite direction. I assume perhaps that maybe a fisherman but I do not know. Out of all of the night time walks where I’ve had to cross paths with someone, this was probably one of the most dubious. At least not shifty like the time where I crossed paths with a cross dresser in Harold Boas Gardens at 130 in the morning 😳. Anyway I eventually made it home by 4am.
The next few days I just recovered and played Link’s Awakening on my Switch.
Nearly two weeks passed and then I was time to go back to work.
Work
First day back I got asked if I wanted to take over some of the jobs that one of the other accountants had been working on before she left a few days earlier. Because of this, Jan & Feb became pretty hectic for me and I did not do much else, played golf twice and that was probably it.
Didn’t realise anyone was going to the city, thought everyone was just going to Carousel. Was trying to work out how I could get to Carousel and drink and how practical my options were. Went to the gym and made it back home and I had gone too hard on the treadmill and was too tired! Room me until
close to 11 before I built up the motivation to go out. Walked to the train station and made it until the city by 1130.
JC, KC, Vesper and Derek had made their way to Market Grounds and I lined up solo and met them there. Was the last Saturday night of summer and it was decent at MG, eventually though we were directed towards Mint even though JC, myself and Vesper were happy at Market Grounds. The group started to get split up at this stage so things started to get messy. Eventually we got split between Mint, Niche and Market Grounds and once I walked out of Mint I decided I would just go home. I walked home bare feet from West Perth and got home just 3am. Derek and KC encouraged me to eat more food and I think they are right. Was a good night, to see friends anyway.
Sat 13/03/21 - Market Grounds
A night where I was actually ready by 930 and made it into the city before 10. I waited around King Square in the cold wind for at least half an hour, JC, Vesp, AJ and another of their friends (I think I have this man once before at YaYa’s) were at Prince Lane and heading to MG. Was getting so cold waiting and checking Messenger GPS but eventually jumped into MG line with these guys.
Was busy again at Market Grounds and we went on dance floor and started drinking. I knew this was going to happen and because of rounds and because AJ has bartending experience we ended up with way too many drinks. Round sometimes = 5 drinks plus 5 shots and there’s only so much non-vodka alcohol that I will drink. I gave my debit card to AJ to pay for a round but it came to over $100... this made me despondent and I knew it would take me about two months to get over.
Kirk and a friend of his showed at like 130 and by this stage I had already had like 8 drinks. It was a good vibe but I left just before 2 (Market Grounds closes at 2 anyway), it was getting to the point where I was trying to work out where I could offload drinks. I said goodbye to everyone and left and just made it to the City West station for the 2:17AM last train to Freo. Made it home and went straight to bed.
Definitely a different start to last year.
SD
