Well the hardass senior police sergeant clamped down on the town last night and there were no callouts or major incidents, which is amazing. It was Cameron's 50th birthday party plus the New Year's shindig at Paddy's Flat, which was mainly attended by the off duty cops and the fireys, and the sergeant warned the "usual suspects" in town that if any bonfires got lit or any parties got out of hand they'd have a mob of highly annoyed drunk emergency services guys turning up and possibly cutting their cars in half with the hydraulic wreck-cutting scissors in revenge.
Anyway, it was a terrific party. Storm, Cam's dog, played door-dog in his black bow tie, and everyone looked sensational in their formal attire - I managed to cobble together a snazzy outfit and Gaz scrubbed up fetchingly in his suit & tie, we agreed that we looked pretty damn good. Monica and I did the obligatory ladies thing and made up platters of finger food while the blokes looked after us with drinks. Gary and I got the cameras out and made all the couples stand in front of the Australian flag wall for their reception photos as they arrived. It was really nice to be all decked out in fancy grown-up clothes and makeup for the first time in months! The blokes all looked wonderful in their suits and they suffered manfully in their ties and jackets in the heat until midnight (Cam's rule).
Cam had joked that he wanted a Glock for his birthday, so Gaz & I gave him a water pistol which of course led to lots of bad behaviour in between all the disco dancing and drunkenly yelling along to Proclaimers songs. Ollie's suit turned out to be one of those velcro tear-away male stripper suits (?! in Meeka ??), which had us in fits of laughter. Gary entertained me with some impromptu pole dancing and us gals did a pretty decent line dancing demonstration to Nutbush City Limits (I am so uncoordinated...)
The new year was greeted with Cam's Scottish flag birthday cake which had him all teary and there was much "Arrrhh yer me brother mate" and wet-eyed male bonding hugs all round, a big pash from Gaz for me and then Tom from the roadhouse, who looks exactly like Angry Anderson, dragged Cam out on to the dance floor for a romantic waltz which was fantastic (Tom's about five foot, Cam's six-four).
At 2 am I discovered Boy snuffling pathetically outside the mess hall - he'd got through the back fence and walked all the way across town to look for us, the silly thing! (Honey stayed at her guard post on the front porch). The poor bugger is desperate for affection and security. We gave him a big drink of water and all the cops and their girlfriends fussed over him.
Around 2:30 am testosterone levels combined with rum started red-zoning among the alpha male contingent - crusty old Chris had had a few too many and took exception to the dance music (you could practically hear the Vietnam flashback chopper noises building behind his eyes), which led to Cam hearing the ancient bagpipes of battle and the two of them starting getting all dog-snarly with each other, calling each other "Corporal" in a not-good way, at which point Gary quietly eased me over to the kitchen with him out of the way of any potential hand to hand combat. Young Bailey the barmaid from The Commie was there on her own so I played mother hen and got her out of there too. Two of the offduty cops, Ollie and Brendan (who look like they're about 17 years old), came to the rescue with excellent mediation skills and defused things, bless them.
We left them to sulk and drove home slowly through the back laneways - there's an unspoken tradition in town that the cops will bust you for drink driving in the main street, but will look the other way if you're a local just getting yourself home without causing trouble. It's hard for them, because they're part of the community but at the same time they have to do their job. The mutual solution is to be mates off duty, but you kind of pretend they're different guys when they're on duty and play by the rules if you get caught. Except for the senior sergeant they're all young fellows and we're always fussing over them at Paddy's -"you be careful out there young fella, give us a call if yer need a hand" (because you really want a bunch of half-pissed hard-core army veterans going into DefCon 5 mission mode outside the supermarket at 3 am).
So there you go - a quiet New Year's here in the wild west, feeling happy and at home with new friends, missing old friends and family, looking forward to more Meeka adventures.
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