Although we’re solidly into the second month of this year, I thought I’d take a moment to recap new year’s eve, the first in ages where I haven’t been in bed by ten pm with an Agatha Christie novel for company.

This year, I went camping - for the first time in roughly twenty five years. I have to admit I was slightly nervous, since I’m a well documented lover of civilisation and urban surrounds. Also, it was my first trip away with my boyfriend, and as all my friends delighted in telling me, camping was not so much just camping, but also make or break time in the relationship stakes.

Apart from some foolish packing which led to me wearing knee high boots in forty degree heat for my trip from Hobart to Melbourne, everything went brilliantly. It was almost all organised by the time I came back, apart from a supermarket trip where we bought four times more food than we needed.

We got to our campsite just after ten pm, the tent was up in about three minutes (North Face, I think I love you), and we spent the next couple of hours drinking Corona, staring at the almost insanely bright stars, and listening to the waves crash on the beach. If life gets anymore perfect, I don’t want to know about it.

The only slight glitch was my first camp site public toilet experience - after which I invented an elaborate face mask system, involving several damp paper towels and my beloved Jo Malone Orange Blossom perfume. We also quickly learned to run through the tea tree grove on the way to the beach to avoid the stealth mosquitoes lurking there, totally unphased by the repellent we’d covered ourselves in.

The second day was my birthday, which was spent alternately making espresso on our camp oven in my little Bialetti, getting smashed by the waves on the beach, reclining in the tent in the mid afternoon sun, and showering at “the shop” in the Honeysuckles. There were actually two shops, but only one was referred to as “the” shop. This was also where I discovered it’s wise to ask the price of beer before purchasing an imported six pack and feeling my pupils dilate after finding out how expensive it was.

On the drive back home, I wished we’d been able to stay another few days, which I guess is the perfect way to leave a holiday. We’re planning another trip in the next couple of weeks, and this time we’ll take Miss M with us, which should be interesting, but I think she’ll love it. And although it’s probably quite obvious, the relationship was most definitely not broken.

Today I’m loving: (and freaking out about) sending in my enrollment for the massage diploma course I’ve been talking about for ages.

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