Although our room, in an immaculate but labyrinthine garden is next to the fire station, we slept the sleep of the just and breakfasted well at the table of Jos and Yvonne Spijkerlos (?) on homemade yoghurt, wholemeal bread and local jam. Failing to see sufficient reason to go elsewhere, we visited the excellent museum (opened by and visited by numerous members of the house of Windsor), wandered round the partially restored Chinese settlement where gold hunters picked up the leavings of the more acceptable speculations, strolled the three streets and two river banks, patronised several bars, cafés and the brewery and bought a woolly vest. Reason? It’s frigging cold! Even with all my hi-tech layers, tights under my trousers and a leopard-print stole, I need Adrian’s puffa coat to stop shivering. Everyone says how, “It was lovely yesterday” but that’s no consolation today, hence the pure merino Woolly Bah. It works. And miraculously, the sun came out, sufficiently for us to sit on our verandah drinking champagne preparatory to a very pleasant New Year’s dinner and welcoming the new 2010 wearing leopard-print crown (courtesy of the Wears, she of Geraldine fame) at the Blue Door.
By 12.30, the town was asleep, save, most conspicuously, for the New Orleans Bar, where a band were playing for free. Within twenty minutes, Adrian had received three offers of marriage, one from a groupie of the band ‘After Hours’ whom she proudly assured us “are from Invercargill, you know”. She was, despite the alarmingly short skirt, incontrovertibly legless, and unlikely to be the partner of the female bass player, who was a 5 foot (in both dimensions) rocker with dwarfish or Hell’s Angels aspirations. But she could play. Here we bopped, with the flower of Arrowtown youth who hadn’t gone to Queenstown for the fireworks, until 2.30.
Having foreseen the unlikelihood of being in any fit state to achieve our intention, we wrote and prepared a seasonal greeting and set up an outbox full of recipients, ensuring that those in UK were seriously confused by having an Auld Lang Syne 13 hours early, so we sent them. Not, however, without having to stagger round the town to find a signal. Ah, so it is in the wilds of Southland.