Off Topic With Ashley

Note: This has been sitting in my drafts folder for the better part of one and a half weeks. Here’s part one of the intended three-part series, and this takes place on the night of Saturday September 24th 2009.

I collapsed on my bed the second I got home, and as an afterthought called Matt who told me he was too hung over to go out. This wasn’t entirely unexpected, and I wasn’t in a position to begrudge him giving me an excuse to continue laying on my bed.

As such I stayed there only half awake until in a whirlwind of panic I realised that I still had to get ready to go out. After a flummox and a rather crude hair restyling I was out the door and managed to actually make it to the train station a whole ten minutes before it was due to arrive.

I took the time to top up my Go Card, which had been doing the three-beep “I’m almost empty, please fill me up you disgusting moneyless hobo” alarm for the last week, and it was finally at a point where I needed to give it some money or else my relationship with Translink would very shortly cease to be. I put my twenty in the machine before realising that yeah, that was all my money for the evening and that yeah, I’d just put it in a machine that doesn’t give change.

The train arrived shortly after my discovery, so I hopped on it and tried to put the fact that I wasn’t getting drunk tonight out of my mind.

I got to Owen’s place which was actually Dan’s place for the night. Owen was off having a break from the monotony of real life (in fact replacing it with another form of monotony entirely,) so I walked in the front door and found the place was empty save for Daniel puttin some clothes on the line.

After ten or so minutes other people started rocking up, and his sister descended the stairs with much fanfare and a hair straightener in need of a power point. Ash Gatteral made an appearance at one point, and there was the usual flurry of confusion about whose name’s what for the night. I settled for The Captain*, and he decided on Brilliant Sir Brilliant**, and we enjoyed a glass of water and a fine scotch or something respectively.

* This fact fabricated to aid storytelling. ** This is also a fabricated fact. I’m such a terrible fibber.

After half an hour of milling around, the taxi arrived early and caught everyone off guard. We piled in and headed to some Italian place in New Farm. We went on some extremely contorted route, and it confused me thoroughly enough that by the time we arrived I was beginning to doubt my ability to find my way to the train station at the end of the night.

Turns out we just took the extremely wrong way to Brunswick Street, and Bellaggio Woodfired Pizza isn’t all that far from Brunswick Street Mall. If you squint.

The night was excellent even if the food did take an awfully long time to come out. The company was new and interesting, and the night culminated in me sticking blu-tack and glitter stars to people’s fingernails. To this day I’ve no idea why I was given the blu-tack but I did sure made the most of it.

I left with Bruce and his automocavalcade in a taxi, and a select few had tea at Carly’s place (previously Dan’s, previously Owen’s place,) before I got a lift to Virginia station to pick up the car I’d forgotten about earlier.