Monday, February 04, 2008

Christmas Day, Hogmany, New year Day, 2007

I worked right over Christmas.


Christmas Eve I was painting until late in a totally empty Soho (bit pointless!). The morning we opened our prezzies on board though I know I have a few more to find that various people posted/ I brought back with me - they will turn up as we move I expect! Thank you all, btw.


The day itself was quite funny – I had to paint at the Football Club (next to Happy Valley Race course) all day. Getting there, despite my worries, was easy – deserted streets but loads of empty taxis!

I have done a few parties in their function rooms before but hadn’t realised how large their site was. I was on the 3rd (?) floor landing, between the corridor that led to their main café (and a huge buffet around the massive swimming pool), and their posher restaurant. As it was a gig I was doing for Zani I couldn’t hand out my card, which was a pain as people kept asking for my number, and his assistant would just give them a scrap of paper with his number scribbled on which I think looks awful! But then again a lot of people knew me from other events of the newspaper.


So, all morning I was decorating kids outside their main restaurant, dribbling at the smell of 100’s of pre-ordered Christmas dinners which were being collected in big cardboard hampers by members who had pre-ordered them, as well as getting whiffs of the stuff being eaten next door to me. Pete & Sue climbed over the Hong Kong ridge and then met Clemet somewhere. When I got my lunch break, I hid my gear in the store room I was told to and had Clement (on my mobile) direct the taxi driver to a small café in Wan Chai where he had taken Pete & Sue. I climbed put of the taxi, still in full Xmas fairy face, dress & wings, to a packed street with a huge queue waiting to get into the café or to collect food orders from it. The only spare seat in the tiny place was beside Clement, luckily. But I got a chorus of ‘WAAAAH!s’ (local version of ‘OOOh!) and a round of applause from the queue & café as I came in. Which had me blushing under my paint but was very sweet! And there was lots of surreptitious photo taking of me as we ate the awful strong milky ‘tea’ they like and lovely hot egg tarts. Clement teaching Pete to order in cantonese amused them as well...


Then we walked to a Mexican for our very late ‘lunch’. It was freaky as even along the main roads the crowds were sparse and you could actually see PAVEMENT around yourself – most unusual! The Mexican did lovely but HUGE portions and the best lime sodas I have had in ages. We liked the bubbling stuff in big carved lava pots they did! Pete liked the ‘ladies’ loitering outside all the ‘dance clubs’ along that street too…
I had to dive into a taxi and head back to my second shift at the Football Club. They had put me in a deserted corridor behind the café this time, which was annoying, as people couldn’t find me; I had to trawl the tables for customers quite a lot! At the end the café manager said we could help ourselves, so we raided the massive buffet they were packing away. I DID manage to get a bit of turkey & cranberry, but no potatoes were in sight. The others were diving into all sorts of sushi and cooked fish but I wanted traditional! I did manage to find Christmas pud too and was stuffed. Of course this was at about 10pm so not great for my sugar levels! There were lots of taxis again – I love HK when it’s as easy to get around as that!

Sue left a couple of days later, and Brian arrived. I was still painting most days for the Tourist Board, including several up at the Peak Tower.
I mentioned to the tourism staff they they could do with checking out their sites – a couple of days running I was in a mall in east Kowloon, which seemed to sell mainly posh suitcases. So it was not exactly brimming with children.
- this is the only child we met there in 2 days! Or customers of any description. I ended up getting the management to let me decorate the hands of all the wistful mall ‘info’ ladies who had been gazing sadly from their booths after 1 manager said not they could NOT have their faces done.
The second day all the tourism staff decided they wanted full faces
and we hung around outside the mall entrance like some sort of face painted tong wanting to mug passers by….


Pete’s cousin Tom arrived the same day as Brian – he’s been teaching English in China for years but now has swapped to Korea. he needed shoes (Korea having even less choice for big feet than HK) so he & Brian hit the shops whilst Peter & I worked. We had a look at all the events on for Hogmany. There were to be fireworks & a piper at Petes main club but you had to book & pay for it.
There were loads of very pricey 'special' nights on in dance clubs. There were special public dance displays
, but to tell the truth nothing grabbed us and most needed us to have posh clothes, lots of money and a tolerance for huge crowds and loud noises. So, New Years Eve when I finished painting, they were waiting in a bar on the same road as the Mexican we went to for Xmas day dinner. Which had a large open front above the street where they were admiring the view.
Of the same dance club ladies…… but the music was great, it was just so nice to hear normal old rock etc hits, my fave! I hate they way they always get converted into mandarin/ Cantonese and then warbled by some drippy Chinese female singer, which is how most western sings get played here.


So, we had pub food, beers (for them) and nice views (for them)
until it got VERY cold and Brian was dancing with my granny shopping trolley full of kit.
As we had dozens of bottles of the cheap rum Pete & Tim bought in the Phillippines onboard, I managed to sped over a tenner on cola and chocolate (quite a feat in HK) to take back to the boat. We huddled out of the wind but then I went off for a snooze, and the 3 boys decided to crash the party being held at Middle Island. That was in full swing until the small hours, but the cat & I huddled under our sleeping bags until they came back a bit the worse for wear. We stuck Tom in the kitchen hull, and Brian, being used to boats (Tom isn’t) had the honour of the first nights sleep on Naughty Boy.

The next morning as I was getting into my fairy dress, there was a splat and a sodden ships cat leapt down into the cabin looking like a bit of dead rat and started washing herself in a vain attempt to dry off.
When I yelled, a very surprised Pete said he’d just been drinking a cup of tea in the other cockpit when the cat had zoomed past him, SWIMMING along the side of the hull, nipped round to the back of the hull and dolphin-leaped out of the water and scurried away. He said she looked as if she knew exactly what she was doing. We asked the coxuns who run the ferryboat all day, and they said yes she does it a lot. They don’t have/ know cats so they thought she fell in for fun, it was a normal thing! So I am feeling very guilty as she doesn’t, and it isn’t and thank goodness she must have only done it when the wind and current were slow enough to let her get on the back of the boat! We took her over to have a look at the new boat in Pingu that evening, and though she didn’t like the ride she was soon exploring under the floors…luckily she came out again!
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