Bag 'a' Chips

What the hell am I complaining for?  Sure, I missed out on my holiday in the sun; poolside cocktails, breakfast buffets and late night turndowns, but I’m not the one with the limp wrist (ooh err!).

Poor old Waltzie should be the one complaining!  She’s the one who got bowled over backwards and ended up snapping both ulna and radius like les carottes en julienne during the first days of her overseas jaunt.  She’s the one who had to be whacked-out on ketamine, slapped in heavy plaster and denied a bath, a holiday, gymnastics, bike riding, swimming, writing with her dominant hand, scratching her nose, rock-climbing, tree-climbing, social-climbing, skateboarding, scooting, football, basketball, dodgeball, pinball or a date to the ball!

It’s Waltzie who should be the one screaming ‘foul play’, but apart from an hour or so of some pretty piercing lunatic screeching, we’ve hardly heard a peep out of her.  An early start, a cramped car ride, two plane trips, five hours in a hospital waiting room and another four waiting to go into theatre - all with a smashed wrist – and her thermonuclear disposition remained with nary a quiver.

The following day, she emerged from her prolonged, drug-induced sleeping beauty act as her usual, patient, trusting, self-assured and assuring self.  And that’s how she’s been ever since.

Meanwhile, Mrs D and I moan and complain of our lack of tropical downtime, and fail to recognise the contrast of Waltzie’s predicament compared with other children around us who shriek and whine tirelessly over splinters in fingers or grazes on knees.  We are too preoccupied with our own material loss to rejoice in this special individual who makes for us a holiday … every day.  We are so proud of you, Waltzie.  Thank you for you.

There's certainly just cause for complaint ... she just doesn't

The Grumpy Hiker

The Rye Foreshore is a contradictory place, especially early in the day when there aren’t so many people around.  On the one hand, the terrain is sufficiently flat and wooded such that a person standing on the sand is unable to clock any buildings or man made structures other than the rickety pier reaching its way out over the sandy flats, while on the other, especially as the morning sun rises higher, turning the shallows a sparkling turquoise and the sand an iridescent white, the razor-sharp glare can pierce the eye sockets and burn a searing, migraine-generating scar on one’s spongy grey-matter.

Such was the case for poor, little Waltzie, who missed out on a good deal of open, outdoor space as a young ‘un, and who I was unable to coax from the shade of the canvas cocoon which, in this era of chemically-driven rapid squamous cell replication, has replaced the nostalgic stripes of the trusty beach umbrella.

After perhaps an hour and half of reading over and over the single, hastily packed story book (for just such contingencies), my cabin fever was on the verge of erupting into a great, Papa-Bear snarl, so in my best Count von Trapp clip, I ordered my two regimental infantrymen off down the now-burning sands for a mid-morning walk along the pier.

Now Hambones is quite partial to a good stiff walk, no doubt stemming from his early pram-riding days when I would take him down the street, and out of necessity, he was forced to vacate the seat to make room for a slab of VB cans.  But Waltzie, having been reared from her early days behind compound walls, never really built-up much of an appetite for even mildly strenuous ambulation.  As such we weren’t long down the beach before I was hearing complaints of sole-maiming sand, sunstroke and general weariness. 

But with good ol’ fashioned stiff upper lippedness and my best Sergeant-Major bark, on I marched them to the end of the pier, where she and Hambones developed a bit of a spring in their steps thanks to some Sunday-morning dive groups, fishing troupes and itinerant teens taking illegal and potentially spine-splintering leaps of the gull-soiled pylons.

Thankfully, sometime during our return journey through the shallows, my scheme took hold and began to flourish as Hambones and Waltzie fell into some ambient verbal exchange which grew into giggles and splashes and eventually, with boogie-boards in tow, a full-blown bout of Waltzie’s unique, electrifying shrieks of pleasure.  This rapturous, ecstatic music, not the blinding sun, was what truly warmed me as I dozed in the shade of the flapping tent, reminding me why it’s so important for these two wonderful beings that I get them out of the house, into the car, and off on a weekend adventure.