At the request of my friend and fellow blogger Lyndal, I have decided to reflect upon my life in the final year of high school.
Picture it, Tweed Heads, 2005.
It was a time of disposable income; living at home with the parents, no rent, no car, no bills. Life was good, and as such, every week when we got paid Lyndal, Felicity and I would trek up the coast to Pacific Fair (or Pac Fair to GC locals) or Robina Town Centre to blow our earnings.
Anyway, towards the end of the year, which coincides with my favourite time of year, Christmas, we decided to really make a day of the expedition and do both shopping centres…in the one-day. Crazy stuff, I know!
The issue with our plan was that one shopping centre is on the coast and the other is inland of the Motorway, and we had no idea how to navigate between the two. Not defeated by us lacking a sense of direction, we pushed on and hoped for the best and the first Chrismukkah Pilgrimage was born.
Why the name? Well it was the height of The OC and I have the hair of a Jew and a love of many days of presents, thus Chrismukkah and thanks to lacking navigational excellence we thought a pilgrimage was apt as we could be lost on the road for forty days and forty nights.
Upon setting out, we decided that we needed an epic soundtrack for such an epic journey and in our minds there was no real choice. My mother’s car, which I had claimed ownership of while she was at work, was one of the last cars ever made to not a have a CD player, so we had the excitement of selecting cassettes for the journey.
As I had thrown out all my cassettes in the early 90s, we stopped in at Big W to peruse their selections. It was amazing, potentially the most exciting shopping trip I’ve ever had. All the tapes were only $3, and the selection…WHAT a selection. Every row was full to the brim with all the classics.
We selected potentially the greatest album, Peter Andre’s Mysterious Girl. We were set. We decided that such awesomeness needed to be savoured and decided the best way to do that was to wait until we were leaving Pacific Fair and embarking on our pilgrimage.
This meant we had a twenty-minute drive to Pac Fair to fill in. This made us sad.
During the drive, we began discussing how great Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas Is You is and regretted not being able to buy that as well.
To dull the pain of such a tragedy we decided to turn on the radio. We were greeted with the greatest sound of all…and our first Chrismukkah Miracle. It was bells, slowly chiming away before fading slightly to make way for…
“I-I-I don’t want a lot for Christmas…”
Our Mariah regret was now a miracle. The volume was immediately cranked (to eleven…just like Kate Ceberano would do…I’ll explain later) and the world’s loudest and greatest sing-a-long ensued.
As the song drew to a close a feeling of sadness fell upon all in the car and I started flicking through the stations to see if I could find something to bring us back to life before Peter got his groove on.
In what was the second Chrismukkah Miracle of the day, we heard those all too familiar bells as Mariah bought us back to life for the second time. With the volume re-cranked, an encore sing-a-long followed and it was just enough time to tide us over for the magic that was ahead.
Mysterious Girl.
We did a hasty shop of Pac Fair, too excited on the impending Peter to focus on much else and decided to leave a mere hour after our arrival.
Our moment, the Holy Grail, had arrived.
I don’t know if it is the reggae sound, the god-awful film clip…I mean, amazing film clip, or the hilarity of the lyrics, but I really do have a soft spot for this song. We hit the right road, and our singing straps at around the same time…and it was magical and Robina quickly opened up in front of us.
This, and Peter’s brilliance, were our third and forth Chrismukkah miracles.
WOOOOOO!!! ahhh it takes me back.
ReplyDeleteThanks for that! xx