Words About Things

It feels like it has been winter in England for about the last 10 months, the sky is permanently gray and my kitchen is somehow always colder than the inside of the fridge. As I was eating my breakfast in front of the fire wondering if it was worth bothering to open the curtains I saw a clip on the television of Australians celebrating their national day. Personally if I lived in a country where it is always sunny and everybody hangs around on the beach all week (don’t pretend they don’t) I would celebrate every day.

The Australia day celebrations seemed designed to annoy those of us in the northern hemisphere who are in the depths of winter. Footage of people surfing and sunbathing and generally having a great time in the sun are the last thing I want to see in the middle of January. I consoled myself with the thought that it was very unlikely that I would be bitten by any native species in England whereas in Australia at least two thirds of the creatures are deadly.

The newsreader said that one of the events taking place was the ‘Havaianas Thong Challenge’ that disappointingly turned out to be something to do with flip-flops. There was also Vegemite wrestling (in rather than against) and presumably quite a few barbecues taking place.

The Australians certainly seem to have a pretty great lifestyle and if flights to Australia didn’t take so long (a flight to Sydney takes over 22 hours) I would have visited by now. It actually took me longer than that to travel to Florida because we took two flights in order to keep the cost down so perhaps flying to Australia wouldn’t be so bad. I would just worry that once I got there I would be unwilling to get back on the plane and come home.