Day 61: Heineken is history.

My second flight without alcohol went off without a hitch. Coke seems to be my new best friend, especially since I discovered that artificial sweeteners literally melt your organs. Better watch the Coke habit though. Don’t want to get enormous now do we. Not buying duty free saved me some dollars too. Awesome. And on swinging back into town, I discover Sydney is wet and positively arctic at 19 degrees C. Not quite the tropical hot house I have been painting for my kiwi compadres. Nevermind. Incidentally, as I was leaving the airport, my cab passed a billboard displaying a large Heineken beer bottle and the line “Some things you can’t share on a blog”. Like a beer dude. Apart from the rampant paranoid anti-blogism it’s displaying and a bemusing apparent desire to align the brand with techno-archaism, I liked it. But of course for this blog, they kind of missed the point. Not sharing a beer is the point for this blog. It’s why it exists. And wait a minute, what point are they actually trying to make? Presumably that Heineken is the real deal, a beer that originated before any hair-brained nincompoop generations started doing newfangled things like blogging. Unlike a blog, a Heineken is something you can hold. It’s something you can taste! Yes? No? Whatever. I am perfectly happy to be crowned Head Weirdo and blaze a trail into a non-beer-drinking, pro-blog-writing future. Are you with me? I’m guessing Heineken’s probably not.

P.S. I have always actually really liked Heineken. I definitely have nothing against their tasty beverage (except of course, in my current predicament, that it has alcohol in it). But I wonder who they’re targeting with their billboard. Older, slightly techno-phobic businessmen who secretly yearn for the old days when deals were made in person over as many drinks as it took to get the job done? Do people like that exist anymore? Or did that breed die out long ago of liver disease?

Day 60: the last supper.

It is the last night of my holiday in New Zealand. Tomorrow I must pack my bags and leave the farm for the airport, and wing my way back to steamy Sydney. It’s okay though. I have had a great time, survived many a drinking challenge, and spent pleasant interludes with innumerable family members and close friends. I’ve also got plenty of things that need doing this year and I’m keen to get started. I spent today lunching with my grandparents (who are aged 90 and 91), Dad and my cool aunty. These are all people I love and love being around, and they are all key members of my strength core (to coin a phrase); just the thought of them and their presence in the world helps me to carry on and to feel safe and strong. They have helped to build me, and they continue to help me stay standing. Then this evening, my dad’s good friend Jacqui took me and Dad out to dinner, which we followed with a drink at a tiny French cafe in one of the new, hip laneways in the city. Naturally I didn’t partake of the Mandarine Napoleon digestif or special port chosen by Jacqui and Dad. I opted instead for a Coke, poured from the tiniest, best looking glass bottle Coke have yet produced, and an espresso. Apart from a millisecond lamenting that I wasn’t sipping champagne in this darling pocket of Frenchness, it was an entirely enjoyable experience, and a fitting end to a fantastic break. And now what? I set back to the task of getting somewhere: with my music, my work, my relationships, my body, my brain, my bank balance. Will a new me rise from the rubble of my old ways in 2010? We can only wait and see.

Day 59: oh one, oh one, one oh.

And so the new year begins. Where I’m sitting, the day could only be described as perfect. My table is shaded by a large green umbrella, the expanse of lawn surrounding me is green in parts and golden in others, and the wide sky above me is crisp and blue, whisped across with light white clouds by cooling breaths of breeze. And it is hot. The dry heat that belongs to these farmland plains, the changeable country that sits equally as easily with icy conditions and swings violently between baking the earth and freezing it from one day to the next. There’s something I like about New Zealand’s way of doing things though. It’s raw and fresh and devastatingly honest. It does what it feels like. And last night it felt like being freakin’ cold, but clear skyed and perfect for a full moon and silver lighted sea. Because for the whole of last night’s party, that was the view that greeted every glance out the window. And what a party it was. The setting and house was vividly reminiscent of something you would find on the Hollywood hills, except for the temperatures. The short sun-frock I was determined to wear proved highly inappropriate for the weather, even with a hoody over top. Lucky Ren, usually residing in Tokyo, had a pair of thick and enormous outdoor kimonos. I adopted one as my housecoat and all was awesome. Those voluminous sleeves even looked quite high fashion. Radical. And the party was ace. Everyone else was getting pretty steadily hammered, but none of them were nasty drunks. As one guest observed, as you get older you tend to associate less with dickheads you don’t like, and more with cool people you do. I don’t know if that’s strictly true, but our crowd was a good one, a varied selection of fun, happy, relaxed and interesting people. Kiwis as a rule do tend towards relaxed and happy, especially ones actually living in kiwiland. It’s not surprising. I woke this morning, on the first day of the year, to the breathtaking ocean view I have already described (without a hangover and feeling awesome. Waahoo!). Now I am sitting in a rural setting rich in rustic charm. And a couple of days ago I was weaving my way along winding roads, through Giotto-esque hills, lush, green and sheep-dotted, to a winery in a quaint, quiet bay. It’s just prettiness galore. And there’s so much space. It keeps things calm. Accordingly, at last night’s party there was no fevered talk of resolutions. Everyone was pretty relaxed on the whole thing, and I loosely committed myself to only one. Apart of course from my non-drinking and my mission to create musical amazingness (and anything else cool that occurs to me), I have resolved to finally learn to drive. My lack of a license has been a shameful inclusion on my loser list for some time now, and this year I plan to do something about it. Indeed, the next time I visit this farm, I plan to be fully qualified to get behind the wheel. And funnily enough, for the first time in my existence I actually feel like I am starting to steer the course of my life, as opposed to going simply where I’m taken. What a coincidence. Did I mention by the way, that I literally started today with a bowl of cherries? I think I like the way this year is shaping up.

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.

Day 57: eating and drinking in the rain.

Okay, all this eating has got to stop. Today we went to a winery in Wainui, a bay not too far from Akaroa, for lunch. It was a nice excursion on a freezing and rainy day (welcome to summer in the South Island of NZ) and a very pleasant catch up with old friends. It was fun. Surprisingly, not drinking was incredibly easy, and really we didn’t go overboard with the food. But when we returned home we fell easily into our now routine of grazing randomly on various post Christmas snacks, and then ate burgers for dinner, with oven fries and coleslaw, followed by ice creams and afghan biscuits (homemade! Sensationally delicious!). This is a recipe for becoming enormous. I am only glad that again I wasn’t adding alcohol calories to the mix. It’s probably the only thing preventing me from returning home to Sydney with decidedly chubby chops. Maybe this arctic weather has sent us all into survival blubber mode (need insulation…eat more food). Oh well, I suppose it is the very end of the year and the wheels have to fall off at some stage (or spare tyres pile on as the case may be). I will try to correct matters somewhat by exercising tomorrow and laying off the choc (which should be easy now that we’ve eaten it all). In any case, a very enjoyable day was had by me and all. Bring on the last day of the year.

Day 56: eating and drinking in the sunshine.

Today the sun came out again after two days of rain. In typical schizophrenic Christchurch style, it was a scorcher, dry and hot and burny. As you never know how long these sunny spells will last in this coastal, small island-ish part of the world, we made the most of the day. After a leisurely breakfast (involving chocolates) and some time spent reading in the sun, I, my Dad, my big brother Nic, sister-in-law Kate, baby nephew Rex, and an old family friend Mike, went on a sojourn to Sumner beach in search of fish and chips. We found them. They were awesome (go the kumera chips!). Interestingly enough, it turned out that Mike’s girlfriend works for some part of the government concerned with protecting people from the harmful effects of alcohol. I think her division was called something like “limiting harm”, which says quite a lot about alcohol and what it’s doing for us. Anyway. We had also made plans to have a barbeque out at the farm with one of my oldest and closest friends Jane, her family, and her partner James, so we headed back home to get things ready. Dad and I went via the supermarket (we picked up some ciders, some non-alcos and various other supplies, like cherries and lollipops), and Kate and Nic went via a winery, did some wine tasting and picked up a case. And then we made the food, our guests arrived and we had a wonderful time sitting in the sunshine sipping drinks, eating nice things and talking. Now as it turned out, not many of us were drinking alcohol. Jane is pregnant so she was on the juices with me, her mum said wine tends to send her to sleep or give her a headache so she wasn’t drinking, and James just isn’t big on booze. This made me think. The more I go on with this mission, the more people I discover who just don’t get into alcohol that much. Jane said that even when she is able to drink she usually sticks to one or two glasses at the most because of the effect it has on her. And lots of other people are just quietly taking a moderate approach to drinking. They’re not making a big song and dance out of it, and they certainly don’t see the need to blog about it. So what’s with me? Am I some kind of lightweight, making out that something normal and easy is hard? Have I just been rolling with an alco crew? Well interestingly enough, Jane’s dad is a volunteer on the alcohol helpline here in Christchurch. If his experience is anything to go by, mine isn’t the only crew with an alcohol issue. Lots of people are struggling with the stuff, especially at this time of year. What’s more, alcohol accounts for around 1,000 deaths every year in New Zealand alone. (That’s a lot more than the one death last year from the drug P that everyone’s so obsessed with down here.) So is anything being done to try and curb people’s consumption of alcohol? Funnily enough again, Jane and James both work in advertising with one of their accounts being the government alcohol and drug safety bit (I don’t know the proper name, as you can probably tell. Maybe it’s the same unit Mike’s girlfriend works for?). Apparently the next attempt to stop people drinking so much might be based around calories. Judging by the number of Magnum ice creams, chocolates, sausages, cherries, cheese, and chips consumed in this household over the past day, it’s probably lucky most of us weren’t drinking.

Day 55: cherry bomb.

I did something vaguely naughty today. I ate a chocolate filled with cherry liqueur. Two actually. I do not, however, consider this a breach. In the first place it was a miniscule amount of alcohol (if even truly alcohol at all). Secondly, I didn’t want to consume the alcohol, I just wanted the chocolate. Thirdly, this whole thing is about not drinking and not getting hammered. It’s not about going to ridiculous lengths to avoid the tiniest droplet in a piece of food. And fourthly, who needs a fourthly? It was two chocolates. Let’s move on.