HAPPY CHRISTMAS

A CHRISTMAS STORY FROM LONG AGO EXCERPTED FROM MY BOOK 'SOUR MOUTH SWEET BOTTOM', FROM AMAZON OR ANYWHERE ELSE THAT SELLS BOOKS

In 1971, I was in my early 30s. I found myself getting bored with the music business - managing rock stars was becoming tedious. So in September, with winter approaching, I decided I'd make a complete change and head for Australia - do something new.

When I arrived, I got myself an audition with a TV channel who wanted a compere for a kids’ afternoon show. I had to be Uncle Grumpy but they felt I wasn’t up to it.

‘You’re not cranky enough,’ they said.

Then, learning I knew about record production, they gave me a TV programme to record songs for. By the end of the year everyone was chasing me to do the same and I’d fallen back into the music business − making albums with two artists and singles with several others.

It wasn’t at all what I’d planned and when Christmas came round I intended to be the grumpy person the TV channel had wanted me to be and spend a few days by myself. But at the last minute I was persuaded by a friend to join him and his family at home on Christmas Day.

It would be no problem getting there, he told me, all I had to do was take the North Sydney ferry, walk a few hundred yards up the road, turn left and then right and their house would be straight in front of me.

I set off with two bottles of good red wine for my hosts – a St Henri Shiraz and a priceless (well, actually, $83 a bottle) 1960 Grange Hermitage.

The day was perfect. Not a cloud in the sky and a blazing sun sparkling on the water of Sydney Harbour. I stood at the rail of the boat taking in the scene – Sydney bridge, the Botanical Gardens sweeping down to the water’s edge, and the pretty green ferries chugging to and fro. (At that time the opera house hadn’t been built.)

My friend had told me not to get off the ferry at North Sydney but to go to the third stop, which turned out to be a small wharf stuck plum in the middle of a posh hillside suburb, each house consuming a half-acre of ground, with swimming pools, manicured gardens and in most of them a genteel Christmas Day gathering already in progress.

I walked as instructed, along the road and up the slight slope of the hill, but it was midday and the temperature was in the high eighties and however gently I walked there was no way I could prevent myself from streaming with sweat. I was wearing a white cotton shirt and linen trousers and what started off cool and loose began to be damp and clinging.

With no sign of the road I was looking for, and fast becoming wet and dishevelled, I decided to ask the way of a group of people gathered round a barbecue in their front garden drinking jugs of beer. They didn’t know the name of my friend and told me I was probably on the wrong road, or the wrong part of the road, or even the wrong part of Sydney.

‘You can use our phone to call them,’ they said, but on the piece of paper I’d brought with me I hadn't written a phone number.

‘I could drive him around and help him look,’ volunteered one man to his wife.

‘You will not,’ she retorted. ‘Look at him − he’s dripping.’

I waved my hand cheerfully, not wanting to start an argument, and set off back the way I’d come.

It took me nearly thirty minutes to get back to the wharf and by then I was an hour late for lunch. I couldn’t go back to Sydney because the ferry didn’t run between 1pm and 5pm. So there was nothing to do but sit in a sodden heap under the shade of a jacaranda tree hanging over the pavement at the bottom of somebody’s garden and wait.

Since I still had the two bottles of red wine, I decided to open the St Henri Shiraxz by knocking the top off it, banging it against the pavement. Having done so, its broken neck looked too dangerous to drink from, so I walked back to the wharf and found a used paper cup in a waste bin. I knelt on the decking and washed it out in the harbour water then walked back to my bottles and poured myself a first delicious cup.

Really, once I’d drunk it I was at a loss to know why I’d ever wanted to go and share Christmas with anyone. Nothing could be more enjoyable than sitting under a jacaranda tree, shaded from the afternoon sun, drinking this magnificent red wine. Life was sublime.

Towards the end of the bottle my paper cup gave up the ghost and disintegrated, the alcohol having removed its wax coating. But it really didn’t matter because I just lay back on the roadside grass and went to sleep.

I was woken by a policeman.

‘Come on, cobber. This is a good residential district. We don’t allow drunks in the street.’

‘I’m not a drunk,’ I protested, though I could clearly hear from my voice that I was.

‘He’s a bloody pom,’ the second cop observed. ‘What you doing here, mate?’

‘I was looking for a friend I was going to have lunch with but I couldn’t find his house.’

‘Well, you can’t sit on the pavement like that, it’s against the by-laws. And you can’t drink in the street either. Why don’t you go and sit by the ferry, it’ll start again in a couple of hours. Where are you trying to get to?’

‘Kings Cross. I’ve got a flat there.’

The first cop was getting impatient. ‘Look, Jim, why don’t we give him a lift.’

His mate wasn’t so charitable. ‘I just got the car washed and he stinks of booze.’

I waved my hand, dismissing their seasonal goodwill. ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll probably have a swim, then sit and wait for the ferry.’

‘You can’t swim here, mate; this is shark territory. Worst spot in the harbour.’

Then they were back in their car, heading up the hill, off to their Christmas lunches.

I was left standing in the afternoon sun clasping my unopened Grange Hermitage. I could sense its impatience at having been kept waiting so long. It was resentful of still being in its bottle when all it longed for was to be seducing me on the grass in the shade of the jacaranda tree as the St Henri Shiraz had done an hour earlier. So I gave in.

And for the next hour, every sip said “Happy Christmas”.

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