However.
On very, very rare occasions, I find myself briefly at a loose end. For example, yesterday. After driving to Launceston with the family and exchanging the dreaded Mediterranean Eggplant tiles for a much niftier bunch of slate tiles, we took in a lunch in the city, and then drifted across to a big hardware complex. Natalie is pining once again for the childhood she never quite got, and is determined to buy some kind of gigantic, child-maiming backyard play complex. She's been tracking these things all over the Internet and elsewhere, and despite my continued assertions that I can probably build whatever the hell it is she wants, she still thinks one of these ginormous and brutally expensive kits is the way to go.
Well, who am I to argue?
Anyway, there were a couple things I wanted at the Great Big Hardware store. I got a wire brush, so I can prep the concrete surface to lay the slate tiles. And I got two big bags of chook shit, so I could provide a good dose of nitrates and nutrients to my fruit trees, seeing as how it's springtime.
But then I was done, wasn't I? And the kids were happily scrambling around inside one of those play-complexes, pre-assembled inside the Big Hardware Store for precisely the purpose of occupying noisy little gobshites while their parents go on a hardware frenzy.
I ordered a cup of tea. I sat down. I waited.
I got bored.
I had nothing to read. Eventually, I pulled out my mobile phone and stared at it. Then I thought about it for a while. And then I started sending annoying text messages to a range of people. Because... well, why not? If I'm going to be dragged willy nilly into this feculent mobile-phone society, I might as well find a few moments of enjoyment while I can, eh?
So I told Trent that tonic water fluoresces under UV light (Which it does.) He got back to me, and opined that the information was fascinating.
Then I sent pointlessly phatic messages to Sam and Angela. And someone else. I can't remember who.
But the best message of the day was the one that went to Barnesm. It provoked an exchange which has carried on in leisurely fashion for 24 hours now, and as he has just had what I must believe is the last word, I shall reproduce it here:
Me: "My dog has no nose."
Barnesm: "How does he smell?"
Me: "No, she went of her own accord."
Barnesm: "But how that dog got into my pyjamas, I'll never know."
Completely gratified my sense of the surreal and ludicrous. So. Now, the rest of you are going to have to beware. Do I have your mobile number? If I do... the day will come. It isn't often I get bored, no. I haven't the time. But it's people like you who are forcing me to carry this stupid, brain-cancer-suspect gadget. And thus, you too shall suffer!
Next time, I think, I'll start in on the Monty Python stuff.
