Go Darke

Where the hell did October come from? It snuck up on me all stealthy-like before charging out from the undergrowth screaming hysterically, poking me in the eyes with its keys and then kneeing me in the groin. Fortunately, having received a fair amount of blunt force trauma to my nether regions (and surrounds) during my tenure on this planet I am now able walk it off much quicker than your average XY. Seriously I’m surprised anything down there actually works… no that slight leftward curvature was there before.

I also feel I have been somewhat remiss with my blogging lately and have recently become concerned that my karmic tally might wander off into positive territory, creating spam and digital flotsam that clogs up the internet kinda feels like my calling. Obviously I would have liked to have had another vocation, one perhaps slightly more utilitarian that actually bettered humanity, but the divine Sorting-hat that decides these sorts of linear life progressions had other ideas. And so here I am, cupping my bruised testicle with one hand and finger typing with the other.

I also (kinda) didn’t renew my WordPress account. Which has caused innumerable suffering as my site uncoiled (violently) and reverted back to a previous, more primordial, version of itself. Trying to stuff it back into the bag again has been… well its impossible.

I’ve been getting back into camping lately, and the fact that tents and sleeping bags… occupy this weird extra-dimensional space when they leave the factory… and then refuse to go back into that space post unbundling is my new go-to analogy for why everything is fucked. Space-time, he added earnestly. Its a thing.

Also why are chicks not into ropes?

I went to the rope shop in Cape Town yesterday. In all honesty I had no idea there could be a commercial enterprise dedicated purely to tethering. (It was amazing!)

Maybe not ALL chicks. But I feel that chicks that are unimpressed by the cool looking stick you found on the beach, or the awesome rock you managed to retrieve from the bottom of the lagoon are generally not the ones that’ll be impressed by the 50mtrs of bright-orange goodness you got (basically for free) from the off-cut bin at the rope shop.

And by free I mean about ten USD.

‘Why do you need that rope? Don’t we have enough ropes?’

Which is a line of questioning that is pure anathema to me! Who even says stuff like ‘enough rope’? Why did you even marry me?

I also bought 11 meters of mooring line. Synthetic and blue. TWELVE strands I say, somewhat authoritatively. Which I used to make a rope swing for the Scouts, clambering up into one of the ancient blue-gums and bow-lining one end at an elevation of about eight meters.

It was pretty much the most frightening thing I’ve done in the last decade!

Deep into my forties now I have become acutely aware of not being able to bounce back from certain occurrences. Falling out of a tree would be quite an uncomfortable experience (I imagine).

When I was a Scout our rope swing swung off (and over) a ledge, with a thirty foot drop onto sharp rocks and water foaming with bilharzia. And really our ‘rope’ was really just a copper telephone cable that we had… eh… *coughs nervously*

…in any event, environments that are frowned upon these days. But every Scout troop should have access a least one rope swing. Even if the danger (with modern sensibilities) has been somewhat nerfed.

In other news.

He doesn’t know it yet but he’s about to go to the vet to get an updated rabies shot. There’s been an outbreak of rabies among the local seal population. Local wildlife experts have warned that seals that seem friendly are not to be trusted and you should likely keep your distance. Which you would imagine would be a generally accepted modus operandi for humans anyway, but the brain drain and selfie culture seem have overridden a lot of the Savannah-esque survival instincts that got us here.

Let me go prepare myself mentally for the wrangling. He will not go willingly.