Saturday 29th December

Saturday 29^th December

This morning I had textmessages from kind (and impressed!) friends and relations.

Hero Sailor Brother Chris was on the front page of the Mercury as well as in the back (sports) section.  And Fundraising Hero Nicole Headlam Darcey was featured, with beautiful photos, in the magazine section.

So a haiku for Pete would read:

proud proud proud proud proud

proud proud proud proud proud proud proud

proud proud proud proud proud

while a haiku for me would also read…

proud proud proud proud proud

proud proud proud proud proud proud proud

proud proud proud proud proud

We had a guided tour of Wild Oats XI at 9.00- thank you Chris.  Pete was mightily impressed and interested.  Leo now has a new ambition – to be a Sydney Hobart sailor on a record-breaking handicap-winning line-honours-winning racing supermaxi yacht…

Pete and I wandered around the (crowded) market and the (crowded) Taste of Tasmania for an hour or so and found ourselves watching the Pier-to-Pier swimming race.  Who are these swimmers, we wondered idly… And then a few minutes later we came across a small group of my family members – we were, apparently, watching Chris, one of the few swimming, very powerfully, without a wetsuit.  Well yes he might have been just a bit bored and in need of exercise after his record-breaking handicap-winning line-honours-winning yacht race…

Yesterday we had a swimmer off... 2XS.

You may know my theme of some things float, some don’t…

Well, oh deary me, yesterday we got back to the marina from various exhausting activities – some of them involved lots of Jif and gallons of Spray ‘n’ Wipe, others involved a delicious meal at Shippies – and started to settle into 2XS life.  I went inside and played with my new pride and joy; Pete did something or another on the floating pontoon involving a noisy splashy tap.  He was a bit startled at the noisy splashiness and bent over the water and then suddenly thought, OH NO!!  WHERE IS MY PHONE????  Had he heard an ominous splash???  He was very deeply distressed and many many sad bad words were uttered into the wind on Prince of Wales Bay.  I came out and made soothing humming sounds, to no avail.  I tried to ring his phone but…no answer… We both assumed it was at the bottom of the sea - some things float, some don’t… I did say, without much hope, Do you think you might have left it in your house?  Or in Unit One?  (Both of these paces had been the recipients of the Jif and the gallons of Spray ‘n’ Wipe that morning.)  No, he said, tersely.

Yet again oh deary me… Pete struggled sadly into his wetsuit while I found flippers, mask, snorkel, and soon Pete was very unhappily diving deep down into Prince of Wales Bay, which tasted horribly, he told me, in bitter tones, of diesel and other noxious substances.  The bottom of the bay is deep mud and… some things float, some don’t – and some things sink deep into the primordial ooze….

He finally clambered out, sad and spluttering, and had a nice hot shower, where he spent a lot of time contemplating how complicated and difficult this loss of phone was going to be.

I elected – with much good sense, I think – to stay on board while he drove back to his house to tell his short-term tenants that they would have to ring me on my phone because his was – gone gone gone. 

And guess what – yes this is a happy happy story – his lovely house tenant, gorgeous Kate Thomas from Sydney said, OH hello, have  you come to get your phone?  Because there it was, on the kitchen bench.  (Which was, might I add, very beautifully Spray 'n' Wiped and Jiffed...)

Calloo callay o frabjous day!!!!

India #55

We went to a restaurant where many mosquitoes came rushing out, just delighted to find Yummy Pete Headlam.   I hardly ever even needed to get out my stick of repellent, I just had to stick close to Pete because he was the cynosure of all mosquito eyes.  I don’t think I got bitten at all; good thing I didn’t bother taking that yucky old anti-malarial medication… Poor Pete, they particularly loved his elbows – yum YUM!!  He had neat lines of equi-distant bites from one side of his elbow to the other, as well as neatly wending their way up his sides and knees.  I can’t actually remember much about his restaurant, except that the electricity kept going off so we had to wobble our way down very dodgy stairs in the dark. 

We had asked a driver, Raj, to come and pick us up for our boat trip on the Ganges at 5.  This meant setting our alarms for 4.30… Somehow Vish and Mary did this; Pete and I – oops - set ours for 6.30.  So we were fairly bleary when they knocked on our door but we were clean, dressed and out and about within five minutes.  Raj got us to our little rowing boat and we went upstream first – south, against a strong current.  This took quite a long time, over an hour.  It was absolutely beautiful, with the sun rising over the water, and people bathing and washing and generally abluting in the ghats (best not to think too much about the e coli count…) When we got to the end of the allotted course, our boatman swung the boat round and we whizzed back down on the current in about ten minutes. 

After the boat trip, Raj took us to some temples.  The monkey temple was swarming with monkeys, which, close up, were not as enticing or gorgeous as I had expected.  They looked as if they would bite very nastily and infectiously so I didn’t hold out my hand and coo at them at all.  There was very high security at this temple; we were all patted down extremely thoroughly – it was almost like my ayurvedic massage in Goa, except not as pleasant; my security guard was a grim, tough chick with a big gun.  There is a horrible reason for all of this security; in March this year this temple was bombed, and over 200 people were killed.