So New Year’s Eve is our Wedding Anniversary … always a funny day to celebrate as everyone and everything is so busy. We had both only remembered ourselves the day before as we lounged on Bondi Beach … and so made an agreement to skip the last minute shopping for Anniversary cards! But 23 years is not a bad milestone … 2 years till the Silver. I started the day with a trip to church (being a Sunday) – even got to sing some Christmas carols. I had forgotten my glasses though and so had to wear my prescription sunglasses to read the words – felt very self-conscious of the rockstar image I was portraying!!! We had a chilled day, Tom treated us to lunch and then we all started our New Year messages on social media. An early rota for showers was necessary as we had to leave the apartment at 5.00pm – they start celebrating early here!!

All 9 of us had tickets for a party at a Boutique Hotel in Watson’s Bay – this included dinner, free drinks from 6.00-9.00pm, music and dancing and full view of the world-famous firework display at Sydney Harbour Bridge. We ‘ubered’ to the venue and met up with Kaye, Greg, Mark and Shirley there. Once again we found ourselves amongst the Sydney glamour set – beautiful women (and men!) all dressed to the nines! We mingled in quite easily!! At 6.00pm the cocktails were declared ready and we joined ‘the posh set’ in racing to get stuck into the free drinks. Aperol Spritz, Pimms and Prosecco in plentiful supplies. From the offset I felt ancient as young person after young person offered me their stool to sit on (did I really look that wobbly at the start of the night)!? Of course they were very polite and glamorous young people and it was an honour to be amongst them. This was reinforced later in the evening when a lady from one other ‘elderly’ group took the time to come over to us and say “it’s nice to see some other oldies here!!”

The food was absolutely incredible – a shared seafood platter to start – everything from the sea you could imagine.

This was followed by lamb, pork and more seafood (trout and prawns) and then pavlova – it really was a first class meal, all served at the table (no queueing up for buffet -yay!!) And boy did we indulge!! And the wine and beer flowed too – there was certainly no scrimping – so by 9.00pm when the free drinks finished we were more than ready to party.

In line with the ‘target audience’ the music throughout the night was of the electronic funk kind (think I got that right)!! Tom, Alice and Marc sensibly escaped into the crowds after the meal to party 🎉 And us oldies had a go at strutting our stuff – once again the young people around us smiled patronisingly!! Full credit goes to Kaye and Greg who managed to perform their ‘rockabilly’ moves to the heavy drum and base beat!! We didn’t see much of Tom during the evening (who can blame him) but when we did meet up at midnight he had made a fair few friends. We watched the spectacular firework display together – it really was something (a bucket list item I would suggest). Partied on till 1.00am and then it was time to try and find transport home (that old joy on New Year’s Eve)! And the whole of Watson’s Bay was rammed with partygoers.

Luckily they were running free buses – we even managed to get Tom onto it. The downside was that it inched its way home due to traffic. So much so, Tom decided to get off half-way so that he could walk … he got home 6 hours later, fitting in a couple of house parties on the way!!!!

Happy New Year everyone. Hope 2018 brings peace, happiness and contentment ❤️