3 December 2016, Melbourne, Australia
I reckon a 40th birthday can’t go by without saying something to mark it. The first thing that needs to be said is HOW FUCKING SPECTACULAR everyone looks. I find it hard to believe that there are 50 better looking people on the planet right now. Or 50 cleverer, funnier, kinder, quirkier people for that matter. If I had to rate how grateful I am to have you lot as my friends, I’d be off the charts. Cos you are all fucking top shelf. And I have had the most incredible birthday week. They say at my son’s kinder that when someone does something kind for you, they are filling up your bucket. Well my bucket is seriously overflowing. I need an Olympic size swimming pool for all the kindness I’ve received. Huge vats of kindness have poured in especially from my dearest husbie who finally managed to surprise me not once but three times in the past week, and my dearest friend K, who put together that fucking amazing celebration jar, so that my festival of birthday will last the whole freaking year. Unbelievable. I also want to give a huge shout out to K and J who came from Tassie to be here. And all the rest of you who have come from as far as 5 km away.
Mostly though I want to say that having all you lot help me enter the new decade by pretending we’re all still living in a previous decade is THE BEST. We all know that life has plenty of shadows and storms (especially life in Melbourne – and especially this shit of a year for the world out there) but birthdays to me are an opportunity to look back on all the best and sunniest moments of life so far, including this one right now, because let’s face it, those moments are what propel us on through the storms. And when I mentally gather up all my funnest moments, they have 2 things in common: they all involve people I love, and music I love. That’s one of the reasons why putting together the soundtrack for tonight was so much fun, because it was like musical time travel through all those best moments. And you guys all feature in that best-of party retrospective, whether it be:
· lifting the roof off the Thornbury Theatre at Westgarth Idol
· having an impromptu home disco with the kids
· being blown away by brilliant gigs
· smashing the dance floor at international conferences
· singing in a choir
· putting together a makeshift band for friends birthdays and weddings
· dancing the night away
· spending every weekend seeing or playing in indie Perth bands at the Grosvenor
· travelling across Australia to see our favourite band
· getting home from school and immediately picking up the phone to spend 3 hours reading through U2 lyrics
· getting busted by the school principal for using the school hall to play Nirvana songs at full volume at 8am on a Wednesday morning
All of those moments contain people I love, and music I love. So I can’t imagine a better way to celebrate my 40th birthday than to dance the night away with people I love, to music I love. So I propose not three cheers, but four cheers – one for each of the last 4 decades and its people and music – hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray! hip hip hooray!