The new year
Posted on | January 4, 2010 | No Comments
This was our fifth time going into the City for New Year’s Eve fireworks. Last year Tilda considered New Year’s Eve to be at least as good as Christmas, as she loved the trip into the City, adored going on the rides, and tolerated the excessively noisy fireworks.
In past years there were crazy pedestrian traffic jams around Flinders Street Station, as thousands left the City after the 9:15 family fireworks just as thousands more arrived in the City for the midnight celebrations. This year the two groups were separated, with the family-friendly celebrations taking place at Yarra Park, just outside the Melbourne Cricket Ground. It was great being able to get off and on the train at Richmond Station, avoiding the crush around Flinders Street Station.
But maybe they thought that only a dozen families came to New Year’s Eve. There weren’t nearly as many rides, and all of them were a bit tame for experienced ridegoers like Tilda. There was one ticket booth. There were 4 stands selling food. And there were lots and lots of people. Temperatures in the upper 30s made everything just that much more pleasant.
Most year’s we’ve taken the train in after 6 PM and had time to go on a few rides, buy some food, sit and watch the family concert, and then watch the fireworks at 9:15. This year we
- found the end of the line for the ticket booth
- bought enough tickets for 3 rides per child
- found the end of the line for the inflatable slide
- sent Yvonne off to find the end of the line for the food stand
- stood waiting for 45 minutes to get on the slide
- sold half our tickets to someone wandering past as it became clear that there would only be time for one ride
- tried to reassure Phoebe that her mother would come eventually, and that she would eat eventually
- watched the dark, threatening clouds come closer
- hoped that the rain wouldn’t start before we were reunited with Yvonne and the stroller, which held raincoats and umbrellas
- watched the kids go down the slide twice each in their allotted 4 minutes
- found Yvonne near the front of one of the food lines
- felt the beginning of the cool change, heralded by a cloud of dust
- figured out which hot dog-based snacks we were going to eat
- discovered that most of the food had already sold out, so corn dogs and chips!
- decided to head straight to the train station with our food, to be out of the rain and close to our route home when the fireworks went off
- walked to the train station in pouring, pouring rain, trailing chips falling from sodden paper bags
- reassured Tilda that we would be fine despite the frequent and very close lightning
- held our spot on the train platform as more and more people joined us there
- watched the beginning of the fireworks display, which started 10 minutes late as the rain tapered off a bit
- dashed into the nearest train door when it arrived, watching fireworks through the windows as we pulled away
No fireworks photos, as I didn’t want to get my camera out in the rain.
In the end, we had a very nice evening at home, eating crackers, brie and pate and playing on the Wii. Phoebe and Estella slept over and all the kids got a restful 6 hours’ sleep.
I was grateful for the mild to cool weather that started the year, as I had quite a bit of housework to catch up on before we welcomed our friends Jon, Linda, James, and Lewis. (Had it been hot instead, I suppose we would have welcomed them in squalour.)
They arrived yesterday afternoon after the long drive from Canberra, and suddenly our house was filled with BOYS. It was crazy and loud for a while, but then everything settled down, or else I got used to it. George was introduced to the boys once the noise level had gone down a bit – James and Lewis were a bit freaked out by his size initially, and will still squeak if they come around a corner and find him there, but once Lewis had figured out how to get George to sit and down everything seemed to be going quite smoothly. Although George is still adjusting to having his couch privileges revoked, as we need the extra seating for humans.
The kids have spent a lot of time in the back yard riding on bikes, scooters, and rollerblades, and we went to the pool today.
It’s Linda’s birthday today, and one of her presents was a margarita-making kit. This fit in very well with my one New Year’s resolution, which is to drink more cocktails. I went to the bottle shop and bought tequila, once I’d figured out where I would find it and what it would look like. I think the last time I bought spirits was in England in 1994 or 1995, when I tried to develop a taste for gin and tonics but ended up drinking gin and Ribena instead because I hated tonic and Ribena covered the gin taste.
I don’t have the shaker yet, or proper glasses for margaritas, and sharing each flavour of mix between me and Linda resulted in teensy tiny drinks, but they were lovely.
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