.... and all across the lawn,
revellers were strewn,
exhausted and wan.
There was a notable Christmas one year when we had overseas visitors staying. The event was celebrated with much festive cheer of the liquid sort.
We were living in Torbay at the time, north of Auckland city, my parents having just bought a 150+ year old 'farmhouse' (that's what we called it) from the artist Dick Frizzell. The place needed work, which was duly completed over the following years, but at the time of purchase, it was a rough-and-ready most excellent party house for lots of people and the resident possums.
The story was the house belonged to a man who oversaw the logs that were floated down Deep Creek (which ran at the base of the property and of course was a much fuller and wider creek then, probably in the mid-1800s/1900s) to be loaded onto steamers that waited at the Waiake wharf.
The back yard of this house was a real sun-trap, excellent for warming up after a swim at the nearby beach, and for sleeping off the excesses of summer parties in privacy.
This photo shows Mom in the foreground with her flowery suit and trademark palm-frond hat, and our two visitors fast asleep in the mid-and-backgrounds (and yes, the gentleman does have a bathing suit on). My skull and crossbones beach towel can be seen flapping on the clothes line and, after taking this photo, I grabbed it and lay down on the grass with the rest of the revellers.
I note now there are two extra towels laid out, awaiting the return of their owners. One may've been a friend of my sister's who, as I recall, had spent the night sleeping in the giant claw-footed bath tub and had crawled out on to the lawn somehow, and the other I suspect was a school friend of mine who had slept over somewhere in the house, perhaps under the Christmas tree as Mom always laid a very nice, soft, tan coloured blanket under the branches upon which she set up her Nativity Scene and all of the gifts.
Ah yes. Those were the days. I'm a bit past all that festive serious partying now, but certainly enjoy a good lie down under a shady tree, perhaps with a book and a cold drink, and, would you believe, I still have the skull and crossbones towel that can, to this day, be seen hanging on the clothesline after a swim.
Let's just say - they don't make towels like that any more.