For us, preparations for New Years Eve started on the 29th Dec., (i.e. they overlapped with us finishing our Christmas cards), because Channel 9 cancelled Christmas. Since Amy's employer is busy asset stripping and reducing costs, she received official advice that the company's Christmas party was cancelled for budget reasons, but that it had been too late to cancel the food hampers, so they needed to be collected and removed from the premises forthwith, before the accountants found them.

 

Thus Amy came to possess a huge cured ham, of approximately 15kg, but without the faintest idea what she was supposed to do with such a thing. A few days of Robert carving slivers off for ham sandwiches confirmed that more drastic action was required if it wasn't to be haunting the household for years. Delia Smith, shipped across the planet for just such an emergency, came to the rescue and provided instructions for roasting the monster Piggy, starting with the improbable notion that it should be left in a bucket of cold water for two days.

 

The capriciousness of our oven is well known to Noel, who gets invited only to roast dinners at our house, and therefore is aware of the full implications behind such invitations, but he gamely accepted yet another gamble. This time he was bringing a guest called Jemma, a  young English lady friend of a friend halfway through a sabbatical on a round-the-world ticket.

 

Our Peninsula, Balmain, provides many excellent vantage points for viewing the New Years Eve fireworks, which are set off from five barges in the harbour, and so people come from all over greater Sydney to view them from our local parks, Yurullbin and Birchgrove. One of the barges was moored right outside our window, adjacent to Cockatoo Island, so an invitation to our house for New Years Eve is highly prized.

 

Our only other friend in Sydney, Gillian, threatened to bring some friends round for the big displays, so we took the decision to serve roast pig on a grand scale, supported by nibbles, potatoes with salsa verde, spinach and pea salad, and some Australian champagne, or sparkling white wine as it must be known.

 

By 16 30 on NYE we had been preparing for 48 hours, so we were ready to set off to collect Noel and Jemma from the ferry wharf at the end of our road...by dinghy. Our Landlady has previously given her gracious permission for us to use a dinghy belonging to a former neighbour, so I rowed Amy round to the wharf in about 40 minutes, where an incredulous Noel and frankly terrified Jemma lowered themselves gingerly into the "tinnie" amid the wake created by every single motorised craft in Sydney speeding past us looking for a good firework viewing spot for the night. We quickly decided Amy should walk back to the house, to increase the freeboard! Noel rowed us back, and I maintain that the reason he did it in about half the time I had taken to go the other way, was because he had the wind behind him.

 

After all that effort, the nibbles that Amy had prepared with the extra time she had from walking back as we rowed were gratefully received.

 

Childrens fireworks go off at 21 00, so we walked down Louisa Rd to a little side street, which turned out to have escaped the crowds in Birchgrove Oval, at about 20 50 and had a superb view of the fireworks going off over Darling Harbour and those silhouetting the bridge.

 

Leaving many revellers in the street already pretty sozzled before the three hour interval to the main display, we returned to the flat to find that Gillian had not only carried out her threat, but brought a party with her! There were eight people sitting on our deck when we returned - at least they had brought food and drink with them! We, of course, had Pig, and lots of it, so we carried on regardless. Introductions were made all round, and we found that actually we had met most of our guests before. "Not very English" was Jemma's summary, fascinated to see a cultural difference in action!