Sunday, April 27, 2008

All things bite and beautiful

Sunday 20th April 2008
Ian painted all day again today and managed to finish the Lounge and Dining Room at about 8pm tonight, now there is only our bedroom to do, the end is in sight and hopefully he will get that finished before he throws all the Roller Trays and Paint Brushes in the bin.
Carolyn spent the morning cleaning while the kids made pretty pictures with Hama Beads that we brought over here with us, young Lucas, one of the kids friends and chief snake identifier is fascinated with them and couldn’t get enough of it.
In the afternoon Carolyn and the kids went to Meelup Beach for a beach Festival, there were bands playing all afternoon and there was a Mini Rock Pool that one of the Rangers had built to show people what they could find around the Meelup area and explain how it would go about killing you. It wasn’t quite that bad, they were shown how to identify what had killed a Cuttlefish by the shape of the tooth marks in it, do yourself a favour, if you are swimming and see a Cuttlefish, swim in the opposite direction because they are quite popular with sharks. They were also shown a Portuguese Man of War Jellyfish that had been found in the area, it was about 4 inches across but would apparently have had trailing bits (the bits that do the damage) about 4 feet long and capable of doing some serious damage.
The kids were also fascinated to discover that Starfish don’t have a big smiley face in the middle with 5 limbs pointing out, they do however have an eye on each of those limbs and if one gets chopped off it will grow another one, in fact if you chop a Jellyfish in half you don’t kill it you just end up with 2 of them. We think we might have to try some out on the menu, if they go down well we could have cracked the problem over sustainable fishing, if we chop enough of them in half there will be plenty to go round for everyone. Just imagine when you ask for Fish Fingers, fingers are what you will get, no more perfectly good bits of Cod being mashed up and wrapped in Breadcrumbs to keep the kids happy, if they want Fingers give them Starfish Fingers and save the Cod for the Adults. If we market this properly we could be millionaires by Christmas.
The kids were also quite impressed with the other things that could be found round Meelup but that wouldn’t kill you and they were allowed to touch or hold some of them.
They all had Hot Dogs for dinner, swam in the sea despite the cooler weather and looked at the sand sculptures. They came home just before the festival finished at 7pm, in time to save Carolyn the embarrassment of having to explain to the kids that all the couples that had been drinking all day in the fresh air were not actually fighting, but were just having fun.
On the way home a Kangaroo hopped across the road in front of the car in front of Carolyn which pleased her and the kids immensely, if the truth be known the Kangaroo was probably quite pleased as well, who knows what might have happened if it had hopped across after the car in front of Carolyn.

No comments: