"Wordfire With Franzy And Mele Was The Greatest Night Of My Life......"

....is the title hinted at by Franzy as one I should use in today's blog article. I thought to myself, "Self, it's as good as any, so why not?"

In fact, this year has given me more than my fair share of ups and downs and I'd like to hope that next year is a tad more Even-Steven because even an overly-caffeinated crackhead with a middle ear infection can tire of an endless rollercoaster ride loosely termed as normal life, but, and yes, this sentence will end pretty soon, through this humble blog I have had the honour of meeting some truly amazing people that it is very likely I would never ever have had the good fortune to meet otherwise.

And thus, Monday night found us packing young Sapphire off to her mate Maya's for a Monday Night Sleepover. This was not difficult; in fact it was about as difficult as asking Pamela Anderson to not wear pants because a school night sleepover is waaaaay cool. Love Chunks and I then made the momentous decision to take the bus into the city so that we both could drink. I know, could us young kids be any wilder and crazier?

That's right dear reader; we were Out There in the heavingly busy Adelaide social stratosphere, on a weeknight. Together. Not at a school meeting, karate class or sitting in the park while a stranger was having a second look inside our house but going to a real social event. And that event was Franzy's Wordfire at the Crown and Sceptre.

We almost ended up at the Club X peep show for a moment there. La Trattoria has a take-away pizza and gelati shop on one side and a sit-down restaurant at the other and let's just say that the staircase in the middle leading skywards was not where the wood-fire oven was located. LC did a passable impression of being puzzled that this was not the case and seemed contented enough to move back to the left and order a marinara and cold chardonnay.

A little later, we walked through the front bar of the Crown and Sceptre, feeling a bit stalkerish, nervous and well, kinda old and daggy. What were sensible, forty-something suburbanites like us doing in a pub on a Monday night? What on earth were we doing going to a literary event when, at times, The Sunday Fail was difficult to interpret? Why had I bothered to put on mascara?

All silly worrying for naught. I recognised Franzy straight away, even though he was sporting an approximation of a beard and not wearing his yellow clogs - perhaps they weren't the most appropriate footwear when reading an excerpt from an almost-finished book and then having to step down from the podium with confidence and grace. His wife, Mele, was also recognisable from Franzy's blog about their wedding photos but looked even more beautiful. To top it all off, I saw Myninjacockle rock up - broad grin, coke in hand and clearly just as excited as we were to be out on the town long after the demise of the 4pm express bus time. We sat next to Franzy's folks (just as cool as I'd imagined) and heard their progeny and progeny-in-law read. Both were brilliant and made me realise yet again just how much talent there is 'out there' and how lucky I was to have just witnessed some of it.

All too soon the readings were over, and a nervous musical threesome called 'Blind Mary' were about to make their inaugural debut. I really should hunt them down (in a nice way) and sincerely apologise to them for chattering on throughout their rather lovely traditional Irish set - Love Chunks tells me that I earned some - wait for it - stern looks - from fans of Blind Mary sitting up the front who wanted me to either shut up or jump through the window. I chose the latter option so that we bloggers could shoot the breeze outside. Besides, the window didn't have any glass and it was relatively easy to climb through and not spill a drop of wine doing it.

Irish fiddle-de-deeing about suffering through the potato famine and a broken heart would just have to wait for another day - I was just too thrilled to meet two of my utterly favourite bloggers and discover that they are just the kind of blokes I'd want as friends in real life. Oh and the same goes for RedCap and Ashleigh too. At the insanely late hour of 10:30pm Love Chunks and I reluctantly headed for home - we had an early start in the morning - via the 106 bus.

What a bugger I'll be leaving South Oz for Phlemington next month but thank God (or the banana) for the blogosphere, email and the occasional crazy airfare sales.