St Nowhere

Oh, oh ,oh... No, no, no, I haven't had my first hangover but there are enough memories sliding around in my head for me to feel the same amount of shame.

For the most part Melissa's Hen's Night went well. I started over at Vanessa's place making sushi and playing with her cat, then we made our way to Gill's place in Glebe, where the night began with six bottles of wine, half a dozen Coronas and a Mexican feast. Next week, Melissa is off to Melbourne for an 'engagement' party with her and Shaun's south-of-the-border mates, then she will be flying off to San Diego (her home town) for the wedding, followed by a two week honeymoon in the original south-of-the-border territory, Mexico, hence the theme.

Anyway, it got late. There weren't a lot of us - Melissa, Gill, Vanessa, Naomi, Joey, Dina and I - but somehow we managed to drink our way through quite a significant amount of wine (more per capita, considering Joey drove in so didn't drink anything) - the equivalent of one bottle and one Corona each. We basically chatted about various things, mostly not about work, which was refreshing. Joey left at around 10pm, but it was about midnight when they decided to head out to the Cross. Ness didn't think it worth the time to go with them because she had to get back to her man and I was tired from drinking and passive smoking, so the two of us ambled back to Broadway.

She checked the bus timetable and found that she had another half-hour to wait so we went into the Lansdowne and bought beer, caged in by emo/goths clad in stereotypical fetish gear. We sat outside in a doorway of a closed cafe near the bus stop because it was stuffy inside (this, I believe, is the reason why the Lansdowne serves beer in plastic cups, preventing breakage and lost schooners). We started talking about Dougal, Ness' 'work spouse', and some of his recent problems. A drunk Irishman came and laid down in front of us, asking us back to his place "for coffee", which I thought was highly amusing.

Ness' bus came so I somehow got myself to Central station and somehow caught the right train, even though I couldn't prevent myself from dozing off at intervals. Anyway, long story short, I woke up and the train was at St Leonards, which is two stations past my stop, so I got out and hauled myself to the other platform to catch the train back. There was a guy sitting on the defunct escalator, asleep. I waited and waited. There were no timetable hints from the indicator board. I curled up and went to sleep on a bench.

I woke up 15 minutes later, positive that I had been the victim of some elaborate Cityrail hoax. I went up to the station proper and read the timetable. This was very difficult, you understand, because I had to haul myself up the motionless escalators and then attempt to read teeny tiny numbers as my head spun. Actually, I spent about 10 minutes attempting to read the wrong timetable (the one going north) so after I discovered my mistake, I clutched the other board and slid down to face the numbers, merely to steady myself on the right timetable. The timetable claimed that the next train was due at 1:58. I decided that if the train hadn't come by 2:10, then I would walk home.

It is about a 20-minute hike from Crows Nest, which is about 10 minutes south of St Leonards, so that was no fluffy call. A 30-minute walk when sober could mean up to an hour when drunk but I was determined not to spend any money on a taxi. Anyway, I stumbled back down to the platform, past the sleeping dude (who later woke up and told me he lived in Parramatta). I curled up on the bench once again.

Fifteen minutes later the train still hadn't come, so I floated out to the bus stop on the Pacific Highway and noted a small bunch of people waiting for a Night Ride bus. Night Ride is a Cityrail invention whereby they provide a bus service between stations in the early hours of the morning because there aren't enough passengers to justify running a train. At that moment, I realised that I must have read the PM timetable, not the AM times, which would have told me that the trains ended at 1-ish. The wait for the bus was only 6 minutes, so I sat out in the suddenly chilly wind with the random people and finally, I was out of stupid St Leonards.

Except the bus did not got to Wollstonecraft, then Waverton. No, no, that would be too easy. Instead it went straight down the Pacific Highway towards North Sydney. Yours truly, still wavering in and out of consciousness, only realised this when we passed the printing company, which marked the head of Bay Road, which is where one would turn off should one want to drop me near my place. So I got off at North Sydney, thankfully not as far down as the station, which is where the bus would usually stop. The only reason I got off where I did was because a guy had pressed the buzzer and the bus had stopped at a non-designated stop.

I disembarked and waited for the passengers to clear before throwing up against a tree. A number of times. Mostly liquid. It surprised me more than anything else, because I hadn't actually felt nauseous until about two seconds before finding the tree. Needless to say I felt bad because I knew that the tree would reek in the sun the next day, but I felt much, much better as well. I popped a pellet of gum in my mouth as I had no water to wash out my mouth, then headed home. I have no idea how long it took. I even came down again to plant my newspaper/note to the newspaper thief. Then I brushed my teeth, had a shower and tumbled into bed. Today I am fighting a losing battle to write while distracted by Day 4 of The Ashes.

Nothing more to report.