The festive season over, Miki and I are back in Shanghai, wearing multiple layers of supposedly warm clothes but still managing to freeze our asses off trying to muddle through the tatters that is our internet business, which was put on the backburner while we went out and had fun fun fun for three weeks.
Christmas was a blast, and New Year even better. Home for the first time in nearly two years I took full advantage of the resident cook (mum) and thus spent the duration in an orgy of eating and drinking. Christmas eve saw an impromtu gathering of many friends from my Omagh glory days, and intentions of rising early Christmas morn all fresh faced and Christmassy were effectively scuppered well before last orders. The Beer Monkeys had their way, and I was grudgingly torn from slumber with an angry hangover, only to gag at dads mulled wine, of which he is so proud. Santa brought a watch though, so that made it all better. Well, that and some industrial strength headache pills from China. And several pints of water.
With Miki in tow, I spent some of the time in a rental car showing her the beautiful countryside of Northern Ireland (and Donegal), although most of the time it had to compete with a book of Sudoku puzzles, and I'm not sure if the scenery won. Plus, next time I do a drive around Ireland, I think I'll do it in summer - in the winter night falls around 4pm, and the Antrim coastline just isn't as striking in the dark...
The annual "New Year Party At The Gordons(TM)" this year had a few less revellers than usual (combination of Jeni being in Korea and me having Scottish friends), so we downgraded it to a Gathering and renamed it "The Gordon's New Year Gathering Of Lyke Minded Individuals Wyth Fun Endeavors And Myghty Thirsts(TM)." Everyone made a concerted effort and alcohol consumption managed to exceed previous parties. Random drink induced hijinxs also hit an all time high. Some highlights, good, bad and ugly:
- Low numbers allowing a massive sit down dinner courtesy of my mum
- Robbie Heaney's frankly shameful comments that he is the spitting image of James Dean
- Jam coming in full bananaphone man gear
- Shirts, hats and Timesplitters
- Simon's early exit (though he probably had a good time)
- Seamus's bizarre "let's pour Sambuca on sleeping people" routine
- A smoking rendition of Bat out of Hell
- An over-eager Paul Townsend turing up with less than eager girlfriend (from Swindon), much to the hilarity of the rest of us. Perhaps it had something to do with everyone telling her how crap Swindon is (and only Andy Wyatt has been there)
- Roxanne drinking song that I won. Probably.
Er, this is quite frankly all that I remember. The rest of you who were there that night, please fill in the quite sizeable gaps..... photos to come once I find them..... Happy New Year everyone!
Saturday, January 6
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3 comments:
I was hopping that my first youtube appearance would amount to more than being cracked on the head. To be fair it was 6 am and it was a choice between that chair and a room with Jonny Rainey. My highlight was James Wright's impromptu Karaoke of all the countries in the world (minus Northern Ireland...grrr). It was twice as funny when we all made him do it again.
Ps Why can't I post without logging on?
One more memory surfaced: very early Christmas eve morning, and we are in Dara's house singing along to the classic Bananaphone song (ring ring ring ring ring ring, bananaphone!) for maybe the 7th time. Some people, in their drunken haze, are now even using props, mostly bananas, to show them on their bananaphone. And hey, look, it's a prop you can eat!
Jump to Mr. Jimmy Wright - his bananaphone prop was actually his real mobile phone. And as every fool knows, you can't eat a mobile phone. Or can you?
Nope, you can't, but Jimmy destroyed his phone giving it a damn good try.
I particularly enjoyed my discussions about new fangled Potatoes. But for me Jimmy Wright's Song of all the countries in the world was top notch. What really made it, was when at the end the exhausted chap had finished and Pete's Dad came in and demanded him to start again, only to moan at the weary fella that he left out Norn Iron, as we all did.
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