In which our Heroine apparently spends months and months lying in a hammock

Welcome to the New Year, Dear Readers. I know it’s late February, but that’s no reason for you not to feel welcome in the year, so do make yourselves at home. I hope your various summers have been charming, as mine largely was. It wasn’t what you might call eventful, per se, but it did involve lazing about the place for simply ages, not to mention all the hard work I put in to lounging and suchlike.

Any number of the jetsetting darlings at uni have been around the globe (pretty sure the only continent no-one’s casually mentioned having dropped in on was Antarctica, and even that may well be because I haven’t really been listening very hard) but I don’t think I actually went further than Penrith the whole time. No, I tell a lie, I spent a weekend in exotic Wodonga with my family, the various travails of which you will be familiar with if you follow me on Twitter (which I cannot, in conscience, recommend doing). Otherwise suffice it to say that a pleasantly excruciating time was had by all, which is more or less what is supposed to happen at the birthdays of relatives who live far enough away that you’ve never met a single one of their friends before. So that, as far as I recall, was as distant as it got for Your Correspondent, but not by any means the charmingest. (Don’t get me wrong, it was actually pretty nice most of the time, it’s just that it was so very pleasant doing all the aforementioned lazing that it just doesn’t quite compare).

So, whenever anyone has said to me “what did you do over the holidays? (I had a lovely time in little old Canada/Italy/Cambodia/Colombia/New Zealand)” I’ve said “Oh, nothing much, I got a bike and a hammock for Christmas, and that’s pretty much all I did with my holidays; bike and hammock.” But to be perfectly honest (and naturally I always am with you, Dear Reader) this is mainly because about 3 weeks before the end of the holidays I suddenly realised I’d frittered it away so thoroughly, what with working in Penrith and lots of little quests, and generally having a pleasantly vague and uncluttered time of it, that I honestly didn’t remember what I’d done with the time at all. I mean, I live quite literally 5 minutes from the beach (and that’s only if you walk quite slowly), and until the last week, I didn’t go to the beach 2 days in a row.

The upshot of which is that these last couple of weeks featured a little flurry of attempted milestones. I’ve been to the beach at least a little bit every day since rather more than a fortnight ago, firstly to make a point to myself, and secondly so that when people said “what did you do?” I could honestly say “I went to the beach a bunch” rather than prevaricate and say “I don’t really remember” which is an answer which the Youth of Today will tend to assume implies that you just enjoyed yourself pharmaceutically. Also, man, I really like going to the beach when I can get out of my own way enough to actually go.

Also, I insisted on learning to ride my bike as far as uni (which, to me, seems really Awfully Far), and have rather smugly succeeded in riding in 3 days in a row this week, which is not something I’d thought my knees would be up to snuff for, really. Nasty creaky middle-aged knees as they are; never take up Netball, turns out it’s terribly bad for the joints. (Exercise: it’s a trap).

Also, this (not the Netball-Betrayed Knees, the lack of Holiday Memories) lead me to plan a series of(well, it was meant to be a series, it ended up rather more like Two) mini-break things, and these were rather charming. Traditionally, of course, one goes on mini-breaks with one’s romantic Significant Other, or so Bridget Jones leads me to believe, but in the absence of such an Other being available/extant, I simply wussed out and went with friends. The second, in fact, was with my parents, which is always pleasant, not only because with them, everything seems to be free, but also because rather tragically I really rather enjoy their company. This particular jaunt was to Terrigal, where apart from keeping up my beaching, I also went to one of those Day Spa things for the first time. I’ve never much fancied the idea of buying a massage or similar on the ground that it seems like a slippery slope from ‘paying a stranger to touch you (for a massage)’ to 'rent boys' and heaven only knows what all. Well, not that I worried that I’d get caught up in some kind of seamy underworld of prostitution if I ever went to a Day Spa, obviously, but it just always seemed slightly creepy and exploitative. Still, I tried it out, because it turns out that these things never seem quite so exploitative if someone else is paying for you to have one (although obviously rent boys would still be so, even if given as some kind of awful gift). Had some kind of Treatment (somehow that word like that, in association with Spas and such, always says ‘James Bond nearly being killed at the beginning of Thunderball’ to me) which involved being covered transiently in Apricot-flavoured lotion and some kind of too-classy-to-be-just-totally-ordinary-sand,-surely grit, which while quite pleasant made me feel mostly like a Mini-Wheat. (In fact, I was going to call this post “In which Our Heroine gets in touch with her Inner Mini-Wheat”, but it felt like somehow it required entirely too much setup.

I wonder if, if I were to document what TV shows and movies and books and such I absorb, I could look back over the season and feel more like I had achieved something? “Well, yes, I did fail to do anything objectively constructive or impressive-sounding, but I watched the entirety of Dollhouse in about 4 days, so that’s something!” Maybe I will try this with Autumn, although I feel that maybe all that would achieve during term-time might be to make me feel guilty for doing so little work. Still, given how narrow my passing of that exam was, that would not necessarily be a bad thing.

Before I sign off, Dear Reader, one last thing; when I say that I frittered away my holiday by not having anything impressive to recall, I should emphasise that I’m talking about that psychological phenomenon whereby the time seems to collapse in on itself in the memory, like a telescope, not suggesting that I only derive enjoyment of my activities because I feel the need to live up to the extravagancies of my peers. I can’t remember which dear well-wishing friend it was who, when I explained this to them, was all overcome with “you can’t compare yourself to them!” and such, but I would hate for you to misunderstand similarly. Not least because I’ve never got the hang of that sort of advice properly, but because I wouldn’t like there to be any misunderstandings between us, Dear Reader. Because what you and I have is special. Whoever you are.