Monday 10th June
Happy Queen’s
Birthday (except it isn’t really…)
It just means a
public holiday and that everything is shut.
We have arrived at Weipa and are anchored quite a long way off the main
beach because of shallowness and tides.
This means – a day of rest for us as well. No point slogging across the waves in the
dinghy to get to town and find nothin’ doin’.
At the other
end of the scale…the Thomas Family has set off, from Hobart via Sydney, on a
South Pacific Cruise, thanks to a very generous Grandfather-and-Fleur
combo. The children are wildly excited;
they have been watching cruise ships up and down the Derwent from their house
in the hills, and now they are actually aboard one of these objects of fantasy
– too wonderful!
Our bed is dry
and reassembled, after quite a bit of a struggle… We had taken the cover off
the new mattress, to rinse everything out.
Getting it dry was OK, thanks to a brisk wind and a bit of fierce
sunshine, but getting it back onto the mattress was a hideous process. Pete is, as I have said, of the Never Ever Ever Give Up persuasion. I
wanted to have hysterics and throw everything into the sea… But we persisted
and got that damned cover on and zipped, with much exertion. And then we looked at it and it looked…wrong…
The mattress was custom made, with a weird bulging shape, like a fat letter b.
(Or d, depending which way
you look at it…) The mattress makers had
very helpfully written ZIP on the foam, so that we could see which end was up,
and we obeyed these instructions…These WRONG instructions… We heaved it down
into the cabin and looked at it doubtfully… Pete was sure it was WRONG but I
didn’t want to admit that we would have to start all over again, heaving it
back up the stairs, onto the deck, taking the cover off, wrestling it back on…
We stopped for a cup of tea, very restorative, and then went back to the task,
with grim determination. It was, of
course, very much easier putting the cover on the correct way…
Pete said this
was very much like trying to get his body into my wetsuit. Most people wouldn’t be able to do this; mine
is small, his is large… But they are the same colour and when he had to get
kitted out in diving gear to fix something, when 2XS was in Island Head Creek,
with James and Rachel, he forced himself into the much too small wetsuit. It is only because he is NeverEverEverGiveUp Headlam that he managed to zip it up, and not
to have a claustrophobic attack. So putting
a mattress cover on the wrong way round – piece of cake, for Pete, really. (No…there is NOT a photo of this uncomfortable
moment…)
Another thing on our agenda for today - trying NOT to scratch our mosquito bites!!
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