oh I do like to be beside the seaside

Saturday started domestically.

Walk and feed the dog, cut the lawns. How very middle aged. Then we left the hound with Mara and headed south, to Kiama and a weekend with Derek - DJ - Jo, Will (6mnths), Abigail (almost 2) and Vince - The Chad (almost 40.) For the first time in ages I had dive gear in the car. Two hour drives are typically uneventful and this was an uneventful two hour drive, enlivened only slightly by a missed freeway exit. We arrived around two. DJ and Jo have a Mediterranean style house, complete with enclosed courtyard and unobstructed view of the ocean from the lounge. Over farmers fields, sheep and cows. Very nice. Indeed. We sat and chatted and had the tour of the house and found out what bits were going to be renovated and it was all very middle aged. Hmm. Middle aged. The Chad arrived a little after us and conversation thereafter alternated between the kids, the house and his continued lethario-ing. Chad is rarely coy, and we got the usual update from one of our few remaining single friends. The afternoon was broken up with fish and chips near the beach in a strange but very nice spot. A row of houses line a road that runs alongside the beach. It's a small road and the houses are unpretentious and quite ordinary. One of the houses is a fish and chip shop. No other shops nearby, all houses. And the chippie feels a lot like a normal house. That sells fish and chips and soft drinks. Sally ordered for us; I said I'd share whatever she got for herself - she never finishes her food - and she ordered more than enough for both of us. With my back to the beach I missed a full-frontal view of an old nutter getting changed from his swimmers. DJ and Sal, facing the ocean, bore the brunt and it fair took the wind from their sails.

DJ and Jo took the kids back home while Sal, Chad and I took a walk along the beach. The one in the picture atop my last entry. Taken with my Sony Ericsson K750i, a phone I still think is utterly fantastic, mainly due to it's camera. We walked to the rocks at the left side of the picture or north end of the beach. Just like the diving it seemed an age since I'd last been to the beach and I enjoyed the walk thoroughly. Quite a few stingers, or bluebottles, had washed ashore in the NE wind and the water felt a little chillier than I expected - a clue to tomorrow that I missed at the time - but the day was warm and the skies were clear and it was, well fantastic.

We chuffed off home after our stroll and wine was opened and I had none and that was a struggle. Not sure why, but I was gagging for a wine or a beer. Have been for a while. Weird mental thing. I've not had a drink this year but I do really want one. However, I was strong, stuck to water and enjoyed the fish and potato dinner DJ and Jo had prepared. We all chose to ignore the fact of our somewhat undiplomatic lunch choice of fish and chips. Oops. Vince joined us for lunch having had an afternoon nap. The mind is strong, but it seems the following day his ageing gym-honed body is weak. Gotta love the big fella and I don't know what DJ and I will do when we can no longer live vicariously through him. Knackered each for our own reason we headed to bed.

Hold on, I missed something. "I missed something"is not something the p-plate driver of a car full of young folks could say about the telegraph pole he smashed into at the bottom of DJ and Jo's road. So just before heading to bed we headed out to see why so many police cars, ambulances and fire trucks had gone down this sleepy, residential road. Sal and Chad did the real rubber-neck wander and came back assuring us that it looked nasty, but the p plate behind the smashed windscreen would, had they taken a camera, have made a good reportage picture. We then headed to bed.

Sunday started kinda slowly.

We did, eventually, have the dive that made the day and made my previous post. Ater we'd almost got kicked out of the house by Sal, such was the lack of get-up-and-go in the menfolk. But go we did, and soon the memories of those dives gone by came flooding back. DJ has a reputation, denied furiously, for world class faffing and dive gear abuse. Not so much abuse as lack of maintenance. So before we left Chad made sure to ask if DJ had everything and yes he said, he did. And it all works. Properly. So at 10:30 it surprised neither of us to find that DJ did not have his wing with him. For the non-divers, the wing is the bit that provides your buoyancy or arrests your lack of it. Kind of important. And so the faffing began. Was there anything at the store he could use? No. We tried, but no. So DJ and I'd have to go home and get the wing and I'd listen to DJ telling me that all of his stuff was together in the one place where it clearly wasn't all together because there was no wing. And when we got home there was no wing in the garage. Well not the one he wanted. We grabbed another and headed back to the dive store where Chad had stayed and were DJs wing had been all along, left there for a service. After the dive we discovered the wing self-inflates. So we can tick both the gear absebt and gear not working as it should boxes. Lets call it a 45min faff. Just like the good old days. World class. But we dived (dove?) and all was well with the world. Post dive we talked diving behind the divestore (apparently Kiama want to get the next scuttled ship in NSW - let's hope they do) and then Chad headed back to Sydney while DJ and I went back to chez DJ some 5hours after we had first departed for our 40min dive. Something the wives pointed out to us. I love a good faff.

Sally and I left at a little after 4 for our little over 2hour stop-start drive home. As uneventful as the drive down, the drive back does feature a couple of nice distant views of the City. Nice as they are, I'd prefer a shorter trip and piss-poor views. All that was left for the day was for Sal and me to have the traditional weekend row, for me to have a run (30mins with a respectable low average heart rate of sub-150bpm) and some crap tele then bed.