We're Jammin', I Hope You Like Toohey's New

Yesterday was Friday, and like the old saying goes, 'Friday, Friday, gotta get down on Friday'. The day involved me getting down to some gardening and cutting grass with machinery, nothing too amazing. Later in the day I went for a quick walk around and upon looking in one particular cave discovered something that I haven't seen before, but did manage to hold my attention for a while.

Pretty cool, right? Well, not 'right' because they're all left hands.

I also had a quick think about theories of evolution, like how some things have disguised themselves as bird poo,

Bird poo with spikes?

And how other things have disguised themselves as dangerous predators, like um... leopards?

Because birds won't eat things that reminds them of cats.

And then I stumbled upon Scotland

Because 'screw you native plants, where's all the Irn-Bru'

So that was the day, the evening was when things became interesting as I was back to doing what I haven't done for a while, drinking beer and seducing ladies. Now, there is an apparent problem with publishing my travel diary online in that anybody can read it, so one often feels they should promote some sort of self censorship, but censorship sucks, so balls to it, here's how my night went.

First up was a few wines at a little gathering of artists and their works. Wollombi is full of artistic types and some of the stuff on display was very good and I have to admit I was very impressed, Lesley even bought a piece. Nico and Lesley were discussing Nico's employee problem, apparently the Nepalese guy currently tasked with helping Nico look after an orchard or four wasn't turning up for work, having regular sick days and generally being a self employed man's worst nightmare, so Lesley suggested I help Nico next week to which Nico added $20 an hour into the deal.... Sold! So hopefully I'll be getting a few pennies to take back to Sydney next weekend for New Year (plans of which are still in a state of flux).
Of course the gallery was just a prologue to the evening that would feature more artistic types, but in the form of music...

Laguna was the place and the Wine Bar was the venue for their fortnightly 'jam night', in which a load of people get together and play songs, it's an open mic night basically. The place filled shortly after our arrival as the jam began to start. Of course there were some players that were better than others, but a tip for any would be performer from me would be 'people like to dance and laugh and sing on a Friday night, so try to avoid doing too many slow songs'. Naturally the 'slow songs' give people a chance to talk over the person on stage and as the beer took hold, frontal lobes did weaken.

Thanks to the marvels of alcohol I was approached by many people as I was not a regular, I was an Englishman, a polite, charming, reserved, 'cute' Englishman that managed to use his charm and wit to attract a fair maiden for the evening, cue music!

She had hair as dark as um... something and her eyes were... a colour, like two shining gems of the same colour as her eyes placed expertly upon a... well, a thing that matches her skin colour which I'm not sure I remember all that well, somewhere between pale and tanned, probably. She was almost feisty and I remember her saying something about being Irish, not sure if she was Irish or somebody else? I'm starting to realise that maybe I could cut this broken image of a woman out of my blog post, the same way Toohey's New has seemingly marred my mind's image of her. She was 28, I remember that because she tried to convince me she was 34 for some reason, I just put it down to her testing me, or something. To be honest I wasn't exactly playing for a long term thing here seeing as I'm a part time nomad that will be far away soon enough, so any stupid thing she said I just went along with because, remember, I'm polite and charming, and up for a good time.

We did drink and dance and flirt until the early hours, she gave me her number, but things became slightly awkward when it came to putting a name to the number... Um... She had mentioned it when we first introduced ourselves, but that was a few beers ago and I didn't realise I needed to remember it for this test... I didn't let on that I was putting the name 'Laguna girl' into my phone and after a few more drunken kisses she drove home, because police? What police? Actually I noticed a lot of revellers entering cars and taking themselves home, but such is village life and there was no other traffic because most of the villagers were at the Laguna Wine Bar. I got a lift back with Nico and the evening was at an end, parts of my memory are dulled and my mild hangover is making me wish I hadn't started writing this blog post just now, but at least you can all read all about how I got pissed and danced around, so I'm glad you took a minute to sit right there and read about how I pulled a girl with black hair.

Oh so fresh.

Of course the music was of a good standard, lots of blues, a bit of country and the kid who lives at the house in which I moved a piano from earlier in the week was on stage at some point playing harmonica.

For now I'm going to do nothing, as is customary on the day after the Friday night before, and steadily recover.