Liberation

Here's a round up of events following my now-dreamlike holiday in the land of my birth.*

Christmas lived up to its 'Silent Night' reputation round my way. Most of it was, thankfully, spent in NZ airports - meaning less time forcing smiles with the olds.

In that No Man's Land between the 26th and the end of the year, commonly otherwise referred to as the Boxing Day Test, my dear friend Robin ate dumplings, dragged us to bars where he eyed up chicks and generally hung with us before heading back to Berlin. We also drank martinis with Elly and beers with Maddy and Will and Max (he passed on the beer, being not yet one year old).

On the 31st, through misadventure (supplied by Robin before he boarded the international flight) I missed midnight. Chris nursed my remains until we awoke at 12.45am. Oops. But bollocks to it - it's for bogans.

We pulled up magnificently on MY BIRTHDAY and went to see Marie Antoinette, which seduced us with its Gang of Four/Bow Wow Wow/Adam Ant and best-ever-New-Order-song ('Ceremony') soundtrack, though as a history purist I was more than a little disturbed that our 'heroine' came over as nothing more harmless than a 19th century Paris Hilton, and that many of the kids in the audience would not have realised 'what happens next' in the scheme of things (the small matter of the guillotine and the birth of La Republique), as the movie politely ends where all that messy real stuff begins. Still, musn't quibble. I love the confused dreamscapes Sofia creates - dappled sun through treelined boulevards at Versailles and powdered high camp set to an intriguingly complementary New Wave soundtrack. She is starting to build a very shimmery, impressionistic body of work. Perhaps if she worked with a clever wordsmith her dialogues could still be fat-free without being a chromosome short (as they sometimes are, unfortunately). Sofia! Over here!

On the first real day of 2007 it all started to unravel...
First I returned to work to be slammed with a potential job crisis (still unresolved - hello Centrelink!); then there was some desperate flat hunting with Chrissy, necessitated by our respective housing situations; then I copped a $145 fine from a cop who was tailing us and did me for not wearing my seat belt during said flat hunting; and finally, the old family dramas resurfaced.

And that was just the first week.

But you know what? I'd rather have financial and 'career' woes than emotional ones, and throughout all these trifling but compounded stresses I had a soft, warm hand to hold and a lot to laugh about. Even at the height of what we have called my misadventure, which at one point entailed buckets and heads-down-toilets, I felt that soft hand stroking my slimy hair. What would I not get through with such a companion? He's the best SSRI getting around!

*Stay tuned - I promise to finish off that little travelogue. And for those of you who thought that blog was a little light-on for sex, drugs and rock n roll, let me reassure you that what started off as sleepy holiday with spectacular scenery on a tourist bus with a bunch of British 50-somethings ends with Chris and me in a campervan parked at the side of the road in the plush suburbs of central Auckland like two blissful vagrants with only Dolmio bottles for 'comfort', to coin a very coy American euphemism (used earlier in our trip on tour buses thus - 'there will be a five minute comfort stop at Hokitika') via a Wellington doss house.