Who's a Fat Bastard - Auld Lang Sine

December 31 2014

What's the big deal?

      The last day of the year was turning out to be a busy one. As is the Scottish tradition, the condition that your house is in on New Years Eve, is the way it will stay for the rest of the year. We are screwed! Don't misunderstand me. Our house isn't dirty, it's just full. Our house was full before the fifteen boxes of Christmas crap come out of the attic. The lovely Lisa has raised clutter to an art form. Between the clutter, the Rat dogs and the Papa Squatch Dayscare, resistance is futile!

      I made a rudimentary effort at house keeping, gave up and went and did a workout. 

Post workout happy face?

I did my usual floor exercises and 200 One Stair Steps. I didn't ride the Iron Maiden because we had things to do and we were running late because I never got yesterday's blog posted until late in the morning. 

      They were having a New Years Eve celebration at Mama Lee's care facility at 2:00. Mama Lee had asked us to be there at 1:00. 

      I whip together the last of the turkey into a turkey salad for lunch. 

I put on a shirt with a collar and a sports coat and we head over to Mama Lee's Rat dogs in tow. 

Mama Lee and the lovely Lisa 

The Rat dogs are very popular with the residents. They get so excited when we show up with them and we never put them on the leash. The first thing they do is head to the dining room to check for food shrapnel. Then they come back and visit everyone.

      When we got there just after 1:00, Mama Lee was  positioned right in front of the entertainers who were still setting up their gear.

I have seen these guys before. They work the care center circuit.

It's quite the story really.The one fellow is a blind guitar player in his sixties who also runs the drum machine and his partner is an eighty-eight year old fiddle player. 

They are called Good Friends

They don't play any songs written after 1957. They did rock out on an Elvis tune. They were really good and everyone was having a great time. At 2:00 ish o'clock, which would make it midnight somewhere in the Mid Atlantic. Party hats and noisemakers were distributed. 
      To those residents who could have alcohol, champagne was provided. Apple juice for the majority. Some of these people are on some pretty wild medications. No one needs to see a ninety year old doing a striptease because of too much vino. 
      I guess punctuality doesn't mean much in a care facility. We did the countdown from ten at 2:13. 

Happy New Year!

When we got to Happy New Year, there were only two or three people there with the lung strength to make the horn toot. It was one of the quietest New Year's celebrations in history. And of course there was cake. Neither the lovely Lisa or myself had any cake. And since it was chocolate cake, and that's bad for dogs and the old Gals feed them all the time. We wanted to make sure that the Rat dogs didn't get hold of any. 

      We said our goodbyes to Mama Lee and took the Rat dogs home to prepare for our next New Years Eve celebration which was at 4:00. That's when it's midnight in Scotland. All of our Scottish friends we're meeting at the Ridgeway Legion at 4:00. We have a lot of them. We Scots being quite the clannish lot. 
      One whole corner of the Legion is called the Scots corner. It seats about sixty people and it was full. 

Scots Corner

When we walked in Davey Fletcher found a couple of chairs and squeezed us in. It was about fifteen minutes to Hogmanany. That's the Scots word for the end of the last day of the year. Davey Fletcher, who is a past president of the Legion emceed the festivities. The pipers played Scotland the Brave  as they marched into the hall. Davey did a short speech honouring the Legion members who had passed that year. The pipers then played a lament for the dead. 

Bagpipes in an enclosed space, an acquired taste.

Then Davey looked at his official Glasgow Rangers wrist watch, which he managed to mention in the conversation three times in ninety seconds! Much to the chagrin of the few Glasgow Celtic fans in attendance.

Davey Fletcher, If it's no Scottish, it's Crap!

      At the end of the countdown kisses, hugs, handshakes and backslaps were flying around, and of course the singing of Auld Lang Sine. Did you know that it was written by Robbie Burns. 

Robbie Burns

The New Years Eve party at the Legion was being hosted by the Coquitlam Glasgow Rangers Supporters club, so most of the Scots including us, were out of there before 5:00 to rest up for the evening. We're too old to pull twelve hour drinking shifts any more. 

      We weren't going to the Legion tonight. We were going to a house party at Kimi and Jerry's place in New Westminster. Kimi is a songwriter and singer and Jerry is a sax player. They are also incredible hosts. There were a lot of musicians at this party. Jerry spent the first two hours finding batteries, power and a place for guys to set up their gear. Meanwhile Kimi was trying to organise the massive quantities of food that was arriving for the Pot Luck.

They had set up two separate areas for making music. Amplified acoustic upstairs. Guitars congas and such at a reasonable level and rock and roll in the basement with a drum kit and a PA. I did sets in both areas. 

Squatch and Roll with Bill Taylor and Jet

The people just kept coming. I estimated that at midnight there were between 90 and 100 people at the party.

This is in a two bedroom New Westminster bungalow! The good thing is you got to know your neighbours real well. I don't know how many times I found my elbow up against some woman's boobs! Some times by accident!

Kimi and Lea

      At midnight Kimi made a short speech and a native friend did a smudge ceremony. He did a really nice job, holding the attention of that many drunks is not an easy thing to do. The silence during the ceremony was profound. This was a gathering of artists and musicians, people who generally are open to alternative ideas.

      Then the party was back on! I spent the next couple of hours in the basement jamming with a drummer and a bass player and two electric guitars. I had a three girl chorus harmonising on some old R&B tunes I know. Midnight Hour and Flip, Flop and Fly. I played a few of my own songs and it was the first time I had heard them played with drummer and bass. All my songs are pretty simple musically. For me it's all about the words, about the story. All of the guys I was playing with were professional musicians at one point or another. They did some pretty cool things with my songs. Particularly Jet on bass.

      Bro Steve sat in and sang a couple of tunes. He has a great voice and he's a really good guitar player too. Only he didn't bring a guitar and everyone else was having too much fun with theirs. I briefly considered giving him mine, but it didn't work out. In my opinion he is the best guitar player I've ever played with. Bill Taylor who was also there, is a real close second and always adjusts my amp so it sounds good. Yet time after time Bro Steve shows up at the jams with no instrument, even though he has several. Just after 2:00 a.m. We started packing up and saying our goodbyes. It took about forty minutes for us to get it together, thank our hosts and the other musicians and load up the car. We were giving a ride home to an old friend of mine from the eighties, Rob and his sister Michelle. They needed to be dropped off at the apartment complex near Lougheed mall. We drive right past it on our way home. After we drop them off we headed straight up Austin Avenue. As we were slowing down at the top of the hill for a red light, I looked over and there were two people standing on the sidewalk. The girl was too old to be a hooker and the guy was too short to be a pimp.

      "Hey Lisa, that's Tall Dar and Reg." I said.  They were obviously waiting for a taxi. There were two Dars in our social group Tall and Little. The lovely Lisa drove around the block so we could pick them up and give them a ride home. It's nuts trying to get a taxi on New Years Eve.

      When Tall Dar got in the car she told us that they had been waiting over forty-five minutes already. She was waiting with Willie at the Legion and Reg was down on the corner of Austin trying to flag down a taxi. They live in our neighbourhood and we were happy to give them a ride home. I told Willie that we would come by after we drop Tall Dar and Reg off. They only live maybe ten minutes from where we picked them up. When we got back to the Legion Willie and Annie were still there but he had just received a call from his ride saying she was five minutes away. It was after 3:30 when we got home. We crawled into bed hoping all our friends had a Happy New Year and that 2015 will be the best year ever!

Happy New Year

That's all I've got

Till next time

Peace out y'all

©2014 Dave Squatch Ward