Grrrreetings and salutions.
We had a great night! Actually, this whole summer has been fun, despite the endless construction work on the house. I made a conscious decision to pay more attention to the Real Stuff around me and fret less about online stuff. Consequently, we've caught up with nearly all our friends and acquaintances, beached often and beached long (summer in Oz! Ah yes!
) and even seen some movies!
But back to NY.
We were invited to dinner at a friend's house, with quite a bunch of others and she put on quite a formal spread! Table cloths and everything, quite startling to my kids who are used to making do with odd bits of cutlery
.
We then proceeded into the city centre by train, a boisterous, cheerful rabble walking down to the train station in the balmy night to join a whole platform full of boisterous, cheerful people. To avoid the traffic crushes of the past, the city is now closed off on NY and all public transport is free and (even more significantly!) plentiful. Getting off at Flinders Street (our central station) was quite surreal: I felt there was not enough air to go around; packed like sardines and vacuum sealed. Sounds icky, but there was an exciting frisson in the crowds and everyone was smiling.
There was entertainment everywhere, with sound stages set up and dance platforms and lights. My kids strutted their stuff, proving that those funk dance classes did actually teach them something.
There were many, many tin rattlers collecting for the various tsunami appeals and it was good to see so many contributing generously to them. We ate ice-cream, armed ourselves with flashing light sabres and wands and ear rings and all other things that wink coloured lights at you and the lot of us finally proceeded to the apartment of yet another friend for the Big Event.
They live on the
8th floor of an apartment building that overlooks the botanic gardens and Yarra River, along the length of which the fireworks were set off.
We ate some more (mostly scrumptious desserts); caught up with lots of people while waiting for midnight, ooo'ed and aaaah'ed, toasted each other with champagne, observed a moment of sober silence for the millions in the midst of the tsunami tragedy, then trained home again to put our happy, but exhausted children to bed.