Yesterday started off pretty lazily – I worked through the middle of the day sitting out on the deck with dad & Jens while they did crosswords and whatnot. But it was such a nice day, I couldn’t spend all of it just sitting around. I messaged Sket & Bobo to see if they wanted to hit the beach, but of course both were at work. Pfft. Lazy buggers.
Dad & Jens were heading off to Jane’s place later anyway – I stayed there with Sarah & mum in the September 2001 school holidays, while mum was house sitting for her. So I figured I’d head down the beach nonetheless, meander around, so who if anyone else showed up, and wind up back at Jane’s. Which I more or less did. I rode from the Briars down along the creek to the beach. I realised shortly after I’d arrived that it was in fact the first time I’d been to the beach since last summer or so… or at least I can’t recall any previous time. That’s a bit disturbing… I’ve always figured myself to be quite beachy… at least I can recall of my younger years seems dominated by the beach.
Anyway, Bobo had said she’d come down after work (finishing at 5:30), and it was about 5pm by the time I actually got down to the beach, so I started wandering south along the beach while I waited. In the end Bobo rang, decided to go home first to eat, and then once there decided not to bother at all. :/
Ah well. I wandered all the way down to end of the beach and started around the rocks on the point, but with bare feet that was slow going – evidently I had much harder feet in years gone by. :) After going around a fair way I realised that the next beach was probably Safety beach, which I didn’t want to spend all night getting to, so I turned around and went the other way. I wandered back up to the other end of the beach, at which I found a relatively quiet spot to sit down for a while.
During my wanderings I’d stopped at the supermarket for a drink, as I’d been feeling a bit headachy quite soon after I arrived at the beach. No matter that I was drinking lots of water all day, the headache stuck with me until this morning, in fact.
In my wanders I saw a quite large, bright red jellyfish. It was quite scary – about two feet in length, with the big bulbular head bit and the guts of it hanging out. It didn’t seem to have any tentacles of the long & thin variety, though. And it was just washing gently up and down on the beach. There were no swimmers around it for quite a distance; evidently it had been there for a while. There were also hundreds of those little kidney jellyfish on the beach, many in pieces having been hassled by kids. I saw a couple of kids having a jellyfish fight, which was especially messy, with jellyfish gibs going up one girl’s nose.
After lying on the beach for a while, and sunset not far away, I decided I’d best start back; I wasn’t sure if people were still at Jane’s, so I might have had to ride all the way back yet. As it was though they were still there, so I joined them. Costa and Will were also there. Will built our first house, and that was more or less the last time he’d seen me, when I was two or so. He lives up in Queensland, and has inexplicably decided to spend two weeks of summer down here instead. Go figure. :)
Costa & Will both had their kids there, along with Jane’s – the oldest of all of which was only 12 – so it was a little screamy for much of the early evening, especially after they were given lolly snakes. At some point Will’s younger daughter Abby – aged 9 – brought out a deck of cards to play “Pooface” with her dad. Initially this game seemed a lot like “I win”, a classical children’s game played against adults where the rules seem to be devised on the spot to lead to the conclusion “I win!”. ;) As it turns out there are fixed rules, although it took a few games through watching the two of them play before anyone else (Will included) really got a grasp of them.
Of course, it wasn’t long before Jens & I joined in, and then my dad did too. Eventually Abby retired for the night; Costa took her place, and the five of us played on until well after midnight. The name of the game seemed to progress, though, once the kids had gone, from the relatively innocuous “Pooface” to “Shitface”, then “Shithead”, then “full of shit”, and so forth. Much banter all round. ;)
I drove Jens & dad home in dad’s car, which was surprisingly strange and difficult – it’s really not been that long since I drove dad’s car, but it felt completely alien. It doesn’t handle as well as my car, but it actually has suspension, so it was an entirely different – and overly more comfortable – feeling. :)
So that was Wednesday. I thought it was a a particularly good day – I got work done, finally got a reasonable amount of sun, and got to call Jens a pooface at least three times in a row. :D
Today the plan is work, although I think I’ll end up [eventually] at nana & pop’s for that swim I didn’t quite get to yesterday. :)
