Leaving Chatham House Rules and The Eagle snoring away merrily, I pack up me troubles (and strewn possessions) in the old kit bag and catch the fast ferry back to Sydney proper. It’s another day at the coalface for ol’ Mansfield you see, imprisoned within UNSW for the heart of the Tuesday.

Chatham HR and The Eagle have a more leisurely time of it, breakfasting in Manly before taking the slow boat and bus to Darlinghurst and our vast and glorious new homestead, just off from Oxford Street. There they meet Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark, new party members just in from NYC (via a couple of stopovers in that People’s Republic of China they’ve got now).

Once I (eventually) arrive at the house, our reunion is sweet indeed – I have not clapped eyes on my buddy Sammy S. since 2013, when we were young and foolish, back during our Varsity days. Together, we all head over to ‘Opera Bar’, right on the harbour, where we meet the World’s Worst Groom and the World’s Best Bride, along with the World’s Worst Best Man – looking surprisingly guiltless, considering the damage he had so recently wrought – and many other friends and wedding party folks.

Bubbles were bought and drunk, but the winds set in and the temperature falls – prompting a move to the oh-so-swanky ‘Hacienda’, indoors thank goodness, and then away to the basement of the Baxter Inn and its hundreds upon hundreds of fancy whiskies. Another old pal of Chatham’s, a local Aussie known only as ‘Hangry A’ rocked up, The Eagle accidentally purchased a hilariously and eye-wateringly expensive tot of scotch, and a very fine evening was had by all.

*

The next day was my last working stint in Oz, and I set at it manfully, only slightly depressed that I could neither take a boat to Taronga Zoo (with Chatham House Rules and The Eagle) or wander the Bondi trail down eastern Sydney (with Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark). Stoically, heroically, I sat my desk, peppered periodically with phone-photos of koalas (Chatham HR’s holy, furry grail), of various sandy beaches, and of duck-billed platypuses (platypae?). The entire group, it seemed, were clearly having significantly more fun than poor old THM.

The tables turned that eve, however, as – due to my lofty status as groomsman extraordinaire – I was invited to the ‘wedding rehearsal dinner’ up on the roof terrace of the East Village Hotel.

The food was fabulous and the red wine superb. In attendance, along with the wider wedding party, was the unfortunate lady fated to be ‘my’ bridesmaid on the Big Day™ (or, to be much more accurate, I was to be ‘her’ groomsman). Known colloquially as ‘Frankie Blue Eyes’ I had, to my eternal shame, once set this lass’ hair on fire, in a drunken prank which had gone rather awry. Relations between us were, therefore, a little frosty. Fortunately the excellent red wine kept flowing, and I did my able best to avoid her icy glares.

Well in my cups by the end, I promise folks a sensationally awesome ‘after party’ back at our nearby mansion. My companions, I assumed, would be up and on it, and we could all quaff deep into the night. Yet, when I arrived with a half dozen would-be revellers, I found each and every one of my housemates sound asleep, the living room covered in takeout boxes and – after our visitors left disappointed – a Gay Arctic Monkey, freshly back from Brisbane, snoring in my bed.

Such things are sent to try us, my friends, and try us oh they do.

*

Red wine hangovers, as I’m sure you know, are cruel beasts indeed. Lamentably, given their embarrassingly early nights, my travel companions were up unconscionably early, rousing me mewling and sobbing for, quote-unquote, ‘activities’.

But what an activity is was: Captain Tom, a family friend of the World Worst Groom’s parents, had offered to take us all around the harbour and surrounding waters on his personal sailing yacht! (The life we lead, dear readers…)

The WWG, his mother and his father – who had, it seemed, survived Saturday night’s onslaught – introduced us to Captain Tom and Captain’s Tom’s Wife, and showed us around their beautiful hillside home. Two rowdy hounds barked at us from the other side of a set of glass sliding doors – more on these tempestuous canines later…

Once all were aboard, Captain Tom and the WWG’s father (the WWG himself having ‘wedding shite’ to take care of) took us out into deeper waters, and the sun came out and drinks were served. A Gay Arctic Monkey raided the galley for white wine, and promptly became a Gay, tipsy, Arctic Monkey. We all tried to persuade Chatham House Rules to take a dip in the water, and almost managed it, until someone spotted a half dozen jellyfish, just floating on by, looking for Canadian-Iraqis to sting.

Having taken in the Opera House at close quarters, sailed under the Harbour Bridge and explored the docks and coves all around the bay, we made our way back to Hunter’s Hill and the home of Captain Tom. As we reached this homestead, we noticed that the aforementioned hounds, previously gaoled, were now bounding around free.

Chatham HR, noted animal lover, leapt from the jetty and stooped down to embrace them, promptly taking the younger beast’s firm snout square between the eyes. He span away reeling, his nose a bloody, savaged mess. The guilty canine, for his part, turned tail and fled into the bushes, barking loud apologies.

“Well yer shouldn’t rile them up, should ya?” noted Captain Tom’s Wife, not overwhelmed with sympathy.

Chatham took it all with surprising grace – until, that is, The Eagle suggested that he may now be rabid, and accordingly have but hours left to live.

What better way then, to spend a man’s final, frothing moments on this earth, than to go for one last supper, on this occasion at Sydney’s premier curry spot, ‘Halabar’? Once in situ, feeling that severely spicy Indian food might ward off infection and save both himself and his freshly mauled nose at the very last, Chatham ordered from the nuclear end of the menu. This, amusingly, reduced a GAM into sweaty, tearful misery:

“This is the hottest thing I’ve ever eaten!” he wailed.

“That’s chutney, mate,” we replied.

“But it buuuuuurrrrns!” he concluded.

With Chatham permanently disfigured and probably dying of Australian rabies (the very worst kind of rabies around); with a GAM red-faced, combusting internally; and with The Eagle feeling increasingly rundown and flightless, we decided to call it a night, wandering back to our fabulous Airbnb, where Sam Seaborn and Marcia Clark, post-date night, where attempting to make head or tail of a televised AFL game.

“Aha!” we aha-ed, “fortunately for you, we’re now Aussie rules experts! Listen to us, dear friends, and you’ll get it in no time at all!”

They did not, of course, ever ‘get it’ – but you know these Americans, dear readers, so closed-minded when it comes to their sports. Not like us Brits (and rabid Canadian-Iraqis), no not like us at all…

*

Friday was officially ‘Blue Mountains Day’ for our team, and as such we started at dawn (well, dawn-ish), hustling down to Central Station where we met both Hangry A and the Von Trapps – good friends of the World’s Best Bride from Cambridge, with whom we had previously shared a lovely Lebanese meal and Captain Tom’s yacht trip.

The train up was a slow one, and seemed to stop at every conceivable opportunity en route to Katoomba, a pleasant enough mountain town, where we enjoyed a fine breakfast at a joint named ‘True for the Bean’.

Fuelled and ready, we walk down to Echo Point, where we finally realise what all this Blue Mountains hype is ‘about’. The views from up there are nothing short of majestic – endless trees and craggy prominences and the rising blue haze which gives this wonderful part of the world its name. We then wandered down to the Three Sisters, a trio of famous, jutting rock stacks, popping out of a particularly craggy escarpment to say ‘G’day’ to the valley below. From there we took the Giant Stairway – eight to nine hundred steps, cut into the rock over a century ago – all the way down to the forest floor.

A very clement hike for one, maybe two hours then led us to the embarkation point for the Katoomba ‘Scenic Railway’ – reportedly the steepest railway in the whole wide world, and certainly the only one that I’ve ever travelled by which plays the ‘Raider’s March’ by John Williams on repeat.

[N.B. $21 for a two minute, one-way trip?! I’d call that pretty bloody ‘steep’, mate! Aha ahaha ahahaha…cough.]

We then had another one-stop train trip, this one notably flatter, across to nearby Leura, where we enjoyed well-deserved beers and humungous burgers at the Alexandra Hotel. Hangry A, having talked a big ‘food consumption’ game, failed to finish hers, uttering excuses most pitiful to hear. I, for the record, finished mine in four minutes flat. The poor thing never even stood a chance, gawd bless it.

And then we faced the long return leg back to distant Darlinghurst, down from the lofty mountains tall, a slow train back to civilisation (or as close as Australians can approximate to it). Once home, I lobbied unsuccessfully for us all to go out on the town, the team preferring to stay in, order some Pad Thai and listen to records – much, in fact, in the style of Upper-Eastside hipsters in their mid-to-late forties.

Appalled and saddened by their behaviour, I wandered the streets alone, just around the corner towards Surry Hills, where I met with a few fine Aussies who would be attending the next day’s wedding festivities.

Yes indeed, my friends, the ‘Wedding of Pane’ was now upon us – but a few hours away, by my watch. All signs pointed to it being, as they say, ‘a big’un’. We therefore sunk a good few preparatory G&Ts, as it really doesn’t do to go into these things without a good and proper warm up. A fellow could pull a muscle, after all…