Thursday Night Karaoke Fever

Hello again, time to try and get a bit more of this written up. Looking back at last time, I was about to head off down to Margaret River, to meet up with my distant cousin James.

[Once again, the road to nowhere is paved with good intentions. This entry sat around gathering dust for a while. Ah well...]

Well, I knew him as James, my parents called him James, and his little sister Liz, who's been in London the last few years, refers to him as James, but apparently these days he's Jim or Jimmie to his mates. And considering I changed at short notice from Patrick to Pat 11 years ago, I guess I can relate to that.

To get down to Margaret River, I had decided to forego the dubious pleasures of getting a Greyhound bus down, and hire a car. Yes, for the first, and thus far only, time on my trip, I actually hired my own motor vehicle. Even more surprising than this change of habit was that I was actually alive and awake and in a good state to drive - the light drizzle probably helped sober me up (yes, it does rain down here too...). My trusty steed for the next two days was a little red Hyundai, an automatic (though I wouldn't hold that against it too much) and actually surprisingly nifty.

Following instructions I had scribbled down in a phone conversation with Jim a couple of evenings earlier, I proceeded for around 2 hours down the Western Australian coast, mostly on the highway, during which time my biggest distraction was making sure that the car didn't run away with itself and get me a speeding ticket. Those who've been in Oz will know that highways there tend to take "long and straight" to a level the Romans would have envied. By around lunchtime I was in Margaret River, one of Australia's better-known wine regions and most respected surf spots. The latter was the main reason Jim was there.

So the first thing we had to do in town, after I'd gone and seen his house, was drive down to have a look at the beach. The weather wasn't great, with a lot of haze and not much sun, but I could see from the surf breaking offshore why the place would be popular. However, apart from knowing that big waves are generally good, and "reliable" big waves seem to be regarded as better, I know nothing about what makes a good surf beach, so will leave the subject there.

After this, we met up with a couple of friends of Jim's and went off to a neighbouring town/village to a pub. Because it's apparently nicer than the pubs in Mag River itself. After visiting one of the latter later on, I wouldn't necessarily agree to that, but hey, it was a pub, it served beer, what more did we need? So I settled in, drinking beers, chatting away with Jim's mates, and watching while he and the rest of the lads bet money on the horses. Never having been one to willingly part with more money than I need to, I didn't join in on this, but was quite funny to watch, particularly as they got a little drunker.

After a few beers, I realised that it was now late-afternoon, going on evening. Where had the afternoon gone? Where had so much of my cash gone? And who the hell was going to drive us back to Mag River, as everybody had been drinking? The answer to the last, at least, turned out to be "one of the drunk people". This was not exactly good news for me, as I loathe drink-driving as a particularly undeveloped form of stupidity, but I had no other reasonable way of getting back into town so I went along with it. Was very happy, though, when we got back to Margaret River and went to one of the local places. Somewhere along on the way, I don't actually remember us getting any dinner, and lunch had been pretty minimal, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that I was a teensy bit pissed by this point.

And then came the clincher. It was Karaoke night at the pub. As quite a few of you know, I'm a bit of a sucker for Karaoke, especially when I'm pissed, and the one tends to lead into the other, and back again, in a vicious circle. The rest of the evening is variously a blur, but I remember winning a Wallabies hat for singing (and then deliberately losing it, because I can't stand the Aussies' rugby team), singing several times solo and a couple in duet with some poor local lass, and that's about it. I woke up the next morning on an unfamiliar sofa, having apparently somehow lost Jim (I found out later he'd been politely asked to leave the pub after a misunderstanding...) and been offered a place to crash by my singing partner and her boyfriend.

Damn, that's one night I have to admit I'm quite glad I don't remember too much of. At any rate, my saviours dropped me back in town (at the pub!), from which I managed to work out the way back to Jim's house. On arrival there, Jim appeared to be in a worse state than I was (which was quite impressive), so we chatted a little bit and then I hit the road and he hit the sack. Realising just how knackered I was (and worried about my blood alcohol level), I only drove up as far as the coast, where I parked up for a couple of hours in a small town and crashed out, listening to the waves break on the beach.

I then got back on the road, as I had to get back into Perth, drop off my stuff at the hostel I was checking into in town (I was leaving on the Easyrider the next morning, and they don't do pick-ups from Freo), then get the car back. Thanks to Perth's traffic, this I managed with only about 2 minutes to spare, but all worked out okay. I was then planning to have a quiet night (understandably) but got talked by my new room-mates into going out for a couple of drinks. I know what you're thinking, but for once I did keep it to a couple, spent much more time chatting with people and (bizarrely) watching the cricket - this was during the Ashes, so everywhere was showing the games.

And then I headed back to the hostel for some much-needed shut-eye, in preparation for joining up with yet another backpacker bus. But that can wait for next time, as I'm determined to actually finish off this bloody post after a month and half's dithering.

Take care and have fun,

Pat