Last night was a good night.

I got to see a man set his pubic hair on fire, that was entertaining.

"Happy New Year!" he cried before pulling down his pants and taking his lighter to his pubic plumage. He got quite a good flame too. Almost at his belly button before patting it out with his hand. All the bystanders were very happy with his performance and gave him a round of applause. I too was quite impressed.

But the night didn't start with such an auspicious event as a man threatening his manhood with a micro-scale bushfire. No, that's just a good eye catching way to start my post.

After Cassie's welcome home party ("Welcome Home Cassie") Ryan and I found our way to Eastwood shops where we picked up Michael before heading off on a much convoluted, mobile assisted discovery of Waverton station. I was following Michael and Ryan while listening to Matchbox 20 and having a jolly old time. They were not wonderful people to follow but managed to make up for that by taking an illegal turn off the freeway that was spectacularly impossible for me to follow and allowing me to take the next exit and arrive at Waverton 15 minutes early which I used up reading my book. Good book, but that's a whole other post entirely.

We trained it after Michael and Ryan both bought me a train ticket. We gave one away to a lady who was very pleased but gave us lots of funny looks as we waited on the station for the train.

Arriving at Observatory Hill barefoot (I'd been barefoot since the food court at 1pm) and doing well in my slow progression to hobbit footage there were already a few early comers who had staked out an area roughly half the size of Tasmainia. I ate some chips.

Later in the evening a game of frisbee was started which was going great till I threw Ryan's frisbee over the fence. We played over the other side of the park with my pink one and it didn't go so well but it was still fun. I think I would like to go to frisbee school.

Eventually lots of people turned up (see here for the full list). I talked to lots of them. Michael, David, Kenny and I had reflection time and discussed our plans for the future while oft being interrupted by our own bouts of carol and old Christian song singing. Michael and I talked a lot last night.

We also went to the toilet together. Jo Michael and I went on the trek to the toilets. While we were there and waiting for Jo (she went a lot slower because she's a girl and girls always have to line up and chat and all that when going to the toilets) some women decided to visit the men's toilets. Obviously not content with waiting in line for so long and happy to sacrifice all the good make up tips and wedding dress discussions that such a line to the toilet will often yield for women-folk, they shot into the men's toilets and made full use of our facilities. This practice continued then for the rest of the night making a women's toilet and unisex toilet.

As this was the case on Michael and I's next trip to the toilet I shared an intimate moment with a young lady. She came out of the cubicle while I lined up to go in. She gave me a smile and said "Hi". That was nice. Her male friend came out of the next one, and they left the toilet together. Neither of them washed their hands.

On our way back we passed the two again. When you walk past people you sometimes hear one or two lines of conversation. We heard from the girl "But I didn't know you liked me like that". I thought, "If you're only going to hear one line of juicy conversation then that's the line to hear." I was pleased with myself and walked back feeling nostalgic for all those New Year's romances I never had.

Coming back from the toilets I noticed that Phil Swan was taking a group photo which I wanted to get in on. I planted myself at the back of the photo, happy to be back just in time when I realised that I knew none of the people around me and I had crashed someone else's photo which Phil had just been kind enough to take.

The fireworks were very nice. When the fireworks are happening I often forget that I'm watching them. They're good fun but I often find myself having to discipline my mind to stay focused on the large pyrotechnic display in front of me. I can sometimes get distracted.

The 9pm ones were good.

Before the midnight display Michael, David and I prepared ourselves for the countdown. We wanted to be right on so we could say "1!" and then the fireworks would go "Bang!". We used the Telstra man to get us on track and we spent 13 nerve-racking minutes leading up to midnight watching the numbers tick by and hoping that we would be right on. We started the countdown and managed to get quite a good level of involvement. "1" and the fireworks went BANG. We were right on. It was tops. We spent the whole of that fireworks display (which was very exciting) feeling extremely chuffed with ourselves for being right on, the only people in the whole of the Hill to be right on I think.

After the fireworks I enacted upon one of my recently made resolutions (not a New Years one) to hug more, and hugged most of the people there. It was very nice and friendly. We sang "Auld Lang Syne" at the top of our lungs. Here is a transcript of the lyrics:

For all acquaintance be forgot
and see la da da daaaa
daa da da da de dadd dea
la nah ne dah for Auld Lang Syne

It was about this stage that the man set a small amount of himself on fire.

We headed home after a bit of clean up. David, Howie, Ryan, Michael and I had a bit of wrestling match on the hill as we waited to leave. That was good fun and I felt particularly male afterwards and un-Tom like.

There were lots of people on the trains. The drive home was to Pop by U2 as selected by David. Everyone was quiet and sleepy. We got home late. Had a chat with Mum and I had a shower. Then I read a Psalm and went to sleep.