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2005-11-21

Swimming in the dark = pissing in the wind

Swimming in the dark is a bad idea. Swimming in the dark when you've had a few beers and a few mojitos is a positively stupid idea.


Given that I know that why on earth did I decide to do it? Maybe it had something to do with the beers and the cocktails. I now have a graze on my forehead on top of a fairly sizeable lump. Mercifully it doesn't look too bad but I wasn't in particularly good shape on Sunday.

How did I do it? Well the pool light wasn't working and I decided I would swim the length of the pool underwater. In my defence this was a feat I had accomplished several times already that night. I executed a perfect flat racing dive and kicked out hard a la the Thorpedo. With no light on in the water the far wall was all but invisible and I lost count of my strokes and collided with the wall at the end of a full breastroke pull.

My immediate reaction was unprintable, and not just because I was underwater. It probably went something like:
THUNK!FizzbubbleUCK...gurgle...UNTINGWALL...splashglub...OW!
I rebounded about a meter from the end of the pool and surfaced in a dazed fountain of cursewords. On checking that I still had my head I was duly satisfied that I did and decided that perhaps that hadn't hurt as much as it felt like it had. I relaxed and turned to exchange pleasanties with others in the pool. 'Bloody hell mate, you're bleeding!'. Bugger.

Having showered and dried myself off it still didn't hurt as much as it should. I sat down to watch a movie, drank lots of water and passed out about half an hour in. Woke up, drank some more water, passed out. Woke up, drank some more water, moved to bed, passed out but could still hear what was going on around me. I couldn't move off the bed, not even when it was being shifted to try and extract the rabbit from underneath.

No it wasn't a concussed fantasy, there actually was a rabbit under the bed, a real live rabbit. His name is Sam and he belongs to Stacey one of our guests at the barbecue that had preceded the swimming in the dark incident. Sam is a very well behaved house rabbit. The front door to the flat had been open all night and he hadn't even tried to make a break for it. I did feel it my duty to point out to Stacey that whilst we had said that it was a Bring Your Own type event, I had honestly expected the meat to be slightly less fresh and mobile than this. Initially there was laughter but then I was told in no uncertain terms that I was not to cook the rabbit. This isn't fair in my book, I love rabbit and someone had brought a fresh one to a barbecue at my house.

BYO is an Aussie institution. Most licensed restaurants allow you to bring your own wine with a nominal corkage charge and when you are invited to a 'barbie' by default you would expect to take your own meat and beer. This works extremely well and removes a lot of the hassle from having a bbq. Paper plates remove the washing up and quick lighting charcoal removes much of the trauma of lighting the grill.

Most Aussies seem to have gas barbeques, which you would have thought was against their religion but in fact given the amount of barbecues thay have it's quite a sensible idea. Propane does away with a vast amount of the mess and fuss and also allows you to take the bbq around the place with you. State legislation aimed at reducing bush fires apparently classifies a charcaol grill as an open fire and a propane one as a self-contained grill, which I guess is fair enough. Aussies have so many barbecues that many of the flats we've looked at have ports in the garden that allow you to plug your barbecue into the mains gas, which is rather neat.

Anyway, back to me. I tried to get up on Sunday I honestly did but I just couldn't keep my eyes open. Poor Emily was left to start packing the flat into boxes on her own whilst I drifted in and out of consciousness on the sofa in front of the cricket. I could regard this as revenge for me having to pack up and ship out all of our belongings from London, but I'm not that petty.

We shall be moving south from Coogee where we currently are, to Maroubra Beach. Good view, stunning apartment, no pool but you can't have it all. We are moving to a 2 bed apartment over Christmas and a 1 bed in January. Pictures as I have them.

7 comments:

  1. The phrase "Knockin' on Joe" is used to describe injuring or maiming oneself in order to avoid heavy labour...who says Nick Cave can't teach you anything?

    Congratu-buggering-lations on finding a flat and sampling all the meats of the Australian cultural stew...

    ...and, in reference to your last post, how does one change the "comments" link to say two different things? (ie, "slightly less fuzzy" & "x attempts to focus"? I've been cheating with a colon, but now I feel inferior.

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  2. Shame about the rabbit, it's good meat. Had some pheasant at the Kings Arms on Friday - first of the season, I was told - but it looked almost like chicken, had the texture of turkey breast, and tasted of nothing much at all. Should have had the deer instead (fresh from this year's Ashridge cull).

    What is it with you and moving? Seems you hate it so much that once isn't enough; you have to do it twice, just to make sure you really DO hate it as much as you claim. Bizarre, that.

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  3. Goat san
    This requires the miracle of JavaScript and some fiddling about in your template. I can forward you the code and tell you where to put it but if I try to type it out here blogger will have a bit of a hissy fit. Drop me an email on dataphageatgmaildotcom

    Dad
    Mmmmmmmmm venison, my favourite (or Hertfordshire roadkill as it's known). They don't have much of it here, they do have 'bouncy venison' though, which I hear is quite good. Haven't tried it yet.

    I would happily stay where I am but our nutty Californian landlady has had to move back to LA so I can't. I thought I was done with moving when we
    went from Stratford to Crouch-End. Shows how wrong you can be.

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  4. Pick a colour, I made it work. I have had a thoroughly unproductive day.

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  5. I meant that it's bizarre that you're moving to two different flats in as many months, not the move to Oz then a move inside the country, but let it pass.

    And yes, to answer your comment in another place, I probably should get my arse over there - and I'd love to - but it needs planning and, as you know, I'm crap at planning. Maybe in Spring (oh bugger it, it's Autumn in your language, I suppose). Got to try and sort out buying the country pile in Croatia first.

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  6. The 2 differrent flats thing came about because of the bloody nightmare that is househunting over here.

    All of the flats we wanted we would have had to move somewhere for at least three weeks. This one is best because it gives us the flat we wanted, which becomes available in January, with a 2 bedroom flat in the same building whilst we're waiting for it.

    Since Mum is here over Christmas a 2 bed flat is going to be pretty handy. If only we had some furniture....

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  7. The Seed has been sown. Watch the Tree grow.

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