Idly dreaming as sauntered home last night, lost in my usual comfortable childish fantasies (Jedi/James Bond/Batman/Free Ice-Cream – delete as appropriate), I was struck by an awkward moment of clarity:
I had just been playing tennis at the club and was walking along the seafront to go back to the apartment to sleep and to prepare for another day at my job working for a huge financial corporation, in Australia. That doesn’t sound like me, how the bloody hell did this happen?
Thankfully this moment was a particularly momentary one, interrupted as it was by a pair of flying foxes doing a quick circuit of the park. These things are bloody enourmous and make a quite incredible sound as they take off (a bit like a wet sheet being shaken). Normally I get to the spot where I had this awkward feeling, deep in infantile reverie, and startle one of the bats. Naturally when it's dark a bat with a wingspan nearly the size of my armspan taking off and swooping low over my head can interupt my train of thought. It's uasually about this time of the night that I realise I need the toilet quite badly and that I should run home up the hill as quickly as possible to avoid an embarassing accident. The shrill scream of "AAAaaarrrgggH! A fucking vampire!" is completely incidental.
I was pleased to see the bats this time. Firstly because for once I saw them before they saw me and secondly it brought me back in to focus. I came to Australia to see things like this every day.
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