Day 58: a party is found.

It’s amazing how, even in a tiny, sleepy city like Christchurch, when a party is needed one will be found. Tonight, the festivities will be hosted by one of the old crew Ren and held in her minted pad high on the hill in Redcliffs, overlooking a spectacular view of beach, ocean, mountains and an impressive swoop of coastline stretching right up to Kaikoura some many miles away. You’d be hard pushed to find a better party spot in my humble and not yet travelled enough opinion. And the moon will be full tonight, and blue. Not in actual colour I am told, but in the sense of that often quoted and very rare celestial occurrence. It’s quite appropriate really, considering that if you’d told me, say, five months ago I’d be heading off to my New Year’s Eve party armed only with a bottle of tonic water and a lemon, I would have given it a blue-moon-ish rating of likelihood to happen. But it is happening my friends, and I am not fearful in the slightest. I am happy and a tinsey excited and looking forward to having a good time with a cool bunch of solid crew, gathered from the corners of the world into one idyllic spot. And to think, as my friend and sister-in-law Kate pointed out, that in previous years, right now would be the time to be deciding whether it would be a two bottle of champagne night, a special variety of wine night, a bottle of vodka night, or a start with beers and progress from there night. The complicated decision-making of it all! The expense! The dizzy intoxication driving the locomotive towards a morning train wreck. Not this year. This year we keep things clean, pure and simple.