I'll admit that I am procrastinating on the countdown at the moment. In all honestly I am having a crisis of consequence. Not quite sure what that means, but it reads kind of of how I feel. My number 25 song is divisive, not to anyone else, but to me. It deserves to be there, but I am not a massive fan so I am spending some time arguing with myself about it. No doubt I will win the argument, but which song will frolic up to 25??

Stay Tuned....

However, this little circumstance affords me the opportunity to regale you with the next tale in my Hauraki Escapade.

This happened late in the year, November 1998 or 1999 i think. Chris and I were hanging out at home one evening listening to the new rock zone when The Green Man announced he was holding a Christmas Party. It sounded pretty cool. A secret location, as much Speights and Wild Turkey bourbon as you could drink, 8 Foot Sativa (spelling??) playing live and much more.

The catch was you didn't ring up and win tickets. You didn't answer a random question and enter a draw. You didn't have to answer the phone with the catchphrase. (which, incidentally, was "Sweet As Nana's Nuts" according to the T-Shirts we later picked up...)

You had to do something awesome to get tickets. And we thought, we're awesome, so lets go. We fell back on our old favourite and picked up alcohol and rolled over to the studio. This time it was locked, (lesson learned, huh?) so we called up the station on Chris' cell phone and when we eventually got on, we told The Green Man we had brought him beer to swap for tickets.

Result. Tickets received!!

There was another catch. Chris was 17. I was 19. The drinking age was 20. We had to meet in an Iconic Auckland bar that had just shut down permanently called Park In The Bar. Also, it was the day of Christmas in the Park and we had promised to go with Chris's girlfriend at the time, Michelle and Sarah W.

Tricky, tricky...

Anyway, we strolled along to Park in the Bar at 9am on the Saturday morning, and lied through our teeth about our ages. We argued that we couldn't have got tickets without being 20, and we'd left our ID at home because we were going to get messy and didn't want to lose our stuff. Maybe they bought it, maybe they didn't care, but whatever we got it.

A quick beer later and we're on a Party bus with Radio Hauraki paper bags over our heads driving around the city in what seemed like large circles. It was only 20 minutes or so later when we arrived somewhere in Grey Lynn I reckon. And after that, things went spastic.

Miss New Zealand was there, Chris was determined to get a phone number. We both settled for autographs. The band was loud, and insane. Not my thing, but at that point I really didn't care. They ran out of Speights, so filled up Chris' pint glass with bourbon. We watched near naked chicks wrestle in a paddling pool full of vodka jelly. It was a pretty gnarly day.

So we bailed with enough time to roll back to the Shore and pick up the girls. Chris was ..... intoxicated shall we say and I remember him saying he had to hold it together so Michelle didn't know he was drunk. He did a wonderful job. She asked if he was drunk before we got out of the car when we arrived at their place.

The rest of the time was a blur, but I remember meeting up with a couple of people we had met earlier in the day at the big gun by the museum. I remember walking for ages from View Rd in Mt Eden to the domain and back and I remember lying in bed with Sarah (nothing happened, I was even lamer back then than I am now) for five hours listening to The Sweetest Thing by U2 on repeat.

I hate that song now.....

Next time I will explain how I won a girl off Radio Hauraki...