There Wasn’t too much to be happy about or celebrate last year Or this year, for that fact. We have all been in lockdown for a large part of 2021, it’s been pretty bloody depressing!
Kerrie and I have decided that we really don’t like each other that much after all. Thirty years down the shit chute.
The only thing I am really looking forward to now we have opened up again is a bloody haircut and a proper beard trim. And to actually sit down at a table inside a cafe and enjoy my coffee, rather than stand on the street corner drinking coffee from a plastic cup looking like a long-haired, out of work layabout. ‘WOPPS’ I am a long-haired, out of work layabout.
Moving forward as it is 8 weeks until Xmas day.
I have New year eve in my sight, NYE 2022, the night we all let our hair well and truly down and party like there is no tomorrow.
NYE is something I will want to keep well away from this year myself. As it will be as mental as anything, a big celebration this year. The first real chance for Melbourne to let it all out and run amuck, a get out of jail free card. There will be lots of, drinking, no masks, kissing all the girls and boys, OH what a night; I Think Not.
As CV19 will be running wilder than the call, for last drinks at a Bogan’s wedding party at an Ayers Rock holiday park.
I expect for myself, I will that be drinking a bottle or two of Champagne and trying my best to stay awake until midnight watch the fireworks on TV, then waddle off to bed and wake up to a new year and the start of a new era…
Living with face masks, In and out of shops etc… Presenting your ID card, just to get into the pub. The only positive thing is this will be an end to cramped seats at the movie theatres, I hope.
I believe Melbourne will bounce back, The venue I work at has been packed since we reopened. With compulsory customer change over every 2 hours. That looks to be working out well enough. People move on to another venue or go home armed with a stack of booze. It will take a while to get used to. However things may never be as good or the same as they were in 2019 Melbourne was pumping, When you had to book weeks ahead to get into your favourite restaurant. Now that we have reopened for business. You have to book 3 weeks ahead to get that bloody haircut I so desperately need. There are still lines for coffee.
However, throughout this shit fight, we have still been able to get something to drink from the corner bottle shop. Thank God for that, it’s the only thing that has kept the peasants, of sound mind, not going mad or mentally ill. throughout this bloody pandemic.
Once again speaking for myself, the only thing I genuinely feel happy about is, I lived in a time before masks, before QR codes and handwashing every time you go into or out of the house and a quick hand wash halfway down the street for good measure.
Oh, yes they were the days when there was no 2-hour time limit. When I could enjoy a beer at the pub, and stay all day, Saturday a long lunch, then settle in for the arvo and see a live band.
The last time I had to prove I have the legal right to be in a pub I was 17 years old. Now I am 65 years old and I still have to prove that I have the legal right to get into a bloody pub. Via QR Code at the door, then show a well-built person dressed in black covered in tats, I have a green tick on my mobile phone, before I can get in and spend as much money as I can in 2 hours, before being moved on.
I doubt many of the readers can remember the 6 o clock swill that once plagued Melbourne drinkers. Or what the 6 o clock swill even was, the point being we have not advanced our drinking culture a lot in the last 80 years, in fact, it has taken a step backwards with this COVID bullshit.
Don’t know what the unvaccinated are going to do.
And to be honest I may not really care, as I am double Vaccinated and so is the person serving me my beer and bringing me my meal, so we are safe to go out for a drink and a feed. I still have a job and so do most people working in hospitality and retail-related jobs.
As to what the new year may or may not hold. Really we will just have to wait and see. However, for me, I am stockpiling the wine, long-life milk and homebrew kits just in case.
Stock your cellar.
Michael Lillis
The Rot has set in
Image: By Luis Echeverri Urrea
