This blog has been suffering a little of late. This is not going to let me allow it to die however. So here comes the quick catch-up. I was last talking about my last days in the Australian snow. From there I headed back to Perth to see my friends and family and to unwind a little in the comfort of my rent-free home. This latest visit to Perth was much like any other. Beers with the boys, watching the grand final at Rich's new pad turning into a crazy drunken night at the casino getting home close to 6am... Catching up with the family for afternoon tea and dinners... But it had its differences too.
I had a friend from Perisher over visiting and I had the pleasure of showing her around our beautiful, largely un-explored coastline. We drove down to Margaret River and checked out some of the local sights. Something I've not done for many years. The rivermouth is a pretty amazing beach. Very wild at this time of year.
This time my sister and beau-frere were over visiting for some of the time with their new-born baby daughter; little Sonia is cute as hell. I have taken it upon myself to speak to her only in Swedish, singing her snow-game songs as lullabys to send her to sleep when she was upset. She seems to like it and I like the idea of having a secret language to communicate without her mother knowing what we're talking about. I suspect it might take a little more than a few whispers once or twice a year to sink in. But who knows. She has some pretty intelligent parents, a fantastic grandmother, a powerfully unique grandfather and I won't even mention her uncle's talents.
I have been meaning to do so for a long time while in Perth but I finally took it upon myself to learn to kitesurf. I couldn't get hold of an instructor at such short notice so I gathered my uncle's old, crappy and seriously inappropriate gear up and marched down to the beach. After several very dangerous incidents and about 5 or 6 days of practice I more or less had it down- right when I had to leave. At least I have something to draw me back home for once. One of the phases of learning is setting the kite up to drag you down the beach with your heels in the sand. I felt like I was getting a handle on this but one day the wind was a little gusty and I wasn't paying attention and before I knew it I was about 4 metres off the ground and drifting down towards some poor unsuspecting girl who was looking out to sea as she walked down the beach. I was about 30 centimeters from kneeing her in the head and SHE apologised to me? That was a close call.
While looking for an instructor I got chatting to a guy who works down at Safety Bay. He told me how in-demand instructors were these days and after I mentioned my instructor experience he became quite keen for me to do a season teaching there. A little strange considering I can't actually do it myself but hey, I was a snowboard instructor before I was any good and arguably I'm no expert on that to this day...
I found it quite amusing to see David's attempts to convince me to move back to Perth. He insists it's the most awesome place ever and that I will just need to spend a bit more time here to realise that it's where I belong. I think he just wants someone else to play with. One day he convinced me to come around and try out a pair of "ocean-going canoes" he'd borrowed off his father-in-law. He clearly had no idea what he was doing and when we got down to the beach it was choppy as hell. The seas were raging and the only people out on the water were kite surfers. No one was surfing, no one was swimming. All the smart people stayed at home. So we set on our gear despite my best protests and waded out into the raging seas. We tried every approach we could think of, getting in on the sand, getting in half way out, getting in past the breakers... Nothing worked. After at least 40 minutes of getting pummelled and smashed around the best attempt of the day was David managing to stay on the craft for about 30 seconds, and making it through one wave. The whole thing was retarded and I'm just glad we didn't attract a group of passer-bys to laugh at us. Not to mention the danger factor; I very narrowly escaped a broken leg when my canoe came crashing towards me on a wave while I stood in the shallows looking the other way. Luckily I did a very un-graceful backwards high-jump over it at the last second. Thanks David, I guess I need a retarded wake-up call once in a while.
Perth will have changed that little bit extra next time I am there. As we speak my mother is putting the finishing touches on moving to a house in Fremantle. I feel as though I should have some feelings of loss and nostalgia come over me but then I soon realise that I moved out of my childhood home about 15 years ago. Still, we were at Keightley road for about 7 years so it's hard not to have some sort of attachment...
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