Day 2 – lounging around the pool
Saturday 3rd December 2016
One of the things I have decided will happen on this holiday is that I will treat it like, well, a real holiday…and…just…relax. That sounds pretty obvious perhaps but the truth is that we rarely spend much time actually relaxing whenever we’re on holiday. We’re typically rushing around trying to take advantage of whatever is it that the destination has to offer. Today, however, can most definitely be characterised as a lazy day, with much lounging around, much sleeping and much doing of sod-all.
The day started with a sleep in – at least for me. Sandy was, of course, up early with the kids, as she typically is anyway. Sandy has always been an early riser. Me? I’m not a morning person at all. In fact, as a general rule, I don’t like morning people…or mornings…or people (Sandy being the obvious exception). Well, the truth is that I’ve always been a bit of a lazy git and far too attached to the comfort of my nest. The beds here are quite comfortable and this just exacerbates the issue. Even at the best of times, I would prefer to start my day slow by getting up as close to noon as possible. As we’re on holiday with nothing prepared as far as organised activities are concerned, well, what’s a gent to do?
So, having finally crawled out of bed at something like mid-morning o’clock, my body eventually stumbled into some semblance of functionality and I thought I’d pop into town with the kids. Sandy took immediate advantage of this idea and decided she would go back to bed herself to catch up on some more sleep. Good for her.
The kids and I piled into the car and we set off in the direction of Yarrawonga town centre. To all intents and purposes, we could have walked there, it’s that close. Despite the fact that we’re on the border of northern Victoria and New South Wales and really out in the middle of nowhere, the town of Yarrawonga is sort of an oasis of civilisation. It sits on the south bank of Lake Mulwala, which itself is a ballooning of the River Murray. The river, of course, serves as the border between northern Victoria and New South Wales. According to the lovely reception staff, this weekend marks the beginning of the cod season, which means that it’s now legal to catch cod here in the river. I’m told this means that the lake and river will be particularly busy this weekend with fishing boats. The main drag through the centre of Yarrawonga looks extraordinarily like the main drag through Mornington, which isn’t far from where we live. The main high street is perpendicular to the river. We drove its length, which continued onto a bridge that took us across into New South Wales. At that point, I turned the car around and we drove back again but only as far as the start of the bridge, where I stopped and we wandered into one of the two local supermarkets to pick up some provisions.
Just outside the supermarket was what looked like an inflatable assault course right on the bank of the river. I took the kids over to take a closer look and it does look like it might be a lot of fun. For about $17 per person, they will don us with a life-vest each and allow us to spend about 50 minutes having fun on this inflatable fun factory. Jennifer already sounds like she’d really like to give this a crack so I suspect that’ll be a nice diversion for us at some point later this week. Stay tuned!
As the mercury has been topping 30 degrees Celsius today, we decided it was time to head back to the resort and the comfort of either our beautifully air-conditioned unit or the pool. Once back, the kids wasted no time in making the decision and we spent the better part of the remainder of the morning lounging around the two pools. There are plenty of kids all over the place here and it hasn’t taken long for ours to mingle and get to know them all. I have to say that I really enjoyed my parenting responsibilities with the kids at the pool – even if that largely meant concentrating persistently on my laptop screen.
After about an hour or so, Sandy was up and about again. She came out to the pool to let me know we’d received a visitor at the door. Evidently, my daily blog from yesterday had attracted the attention on one of the staff here. I think this was because I had tagged the resort as the location and it must have popped up in her Facebook feed as a result. Anyway, she evidently told Sandy she couldn’t stop laughing whilst reading the blog and had decided that we were worthy of a couple of free Internet vouchers. Her name was Vanessa, so if you are reading this, Vanessa, I did pop into reception to thank you in person but you had already left for the day. If I bump into you later in the week, I’ll thank you in person then. In the meantime, thank you so much for that wonderful gesture. We (and by we I mean the kids) will most certainly make good use of those vouchers. Thanks J
After I came back from the office, I tried to convince Sandy she should pop into town herself for a spot of retail therapy. To be honest, she really didn’t take much convincing at all and she was happy with the opportunity for that distraction.
Perhaps now’s a good time to pick up on one of the minor annoyances that I’ve experienced here so far. Flies. It’s not that there are lots of flies here, that isn’t the case at all. It’s just that the flies here are persistent and audacious. Not only will they hover annoyingly close, but they will even land. Eyes, lips, cheeks, ears, anything goes and they aren’t discerning. When I grew up, we had flies but they were easily wafted away and wouldn’t by and large come back. These little sods, on the other hand, are really quite brazen. You can try to waft them away but they immediately come back again. Waft, land, waft, land, waft, land, and so on. Every now and then, I’ll choose to just sit there and continually jiggle my arm or leg to discourage the little shits from landing. This sometimes works but the bastards still keep coming back once I stop jiggling. After a while, I thought I’d observe this going on with others around the pool – just to make sure it wasn’t just me. Do you know what I found? There are actually very few flies but they are just bloody persistent. I could be sitting in one spot for an hour, getting steadily more annoyed at all the little shits, but it’s actually just one or two flies – they just keep coming back. If the opportunity arises over the course of the week, I’m going to procure one of those electrified little tennis racquet fly swatters. Then we’ll see who’s bloody boss, won’t we!
So, I was in mid-waft with a particularly persistent little buggar when I noticed Sandy had returned from her sojourn into Yarrawonga with Joey. She was toting a few inflatable toys for the pool and some much needed provisions. Having clearly had a most taxing morning myself so far, this meant I was now free for a mid-day nap. Well, what’s a chap to do?
By mid-afternoon, I was once again active and decided to inflate the new toys and get into the pool again with the kids. And by kids, I mean ours and an assortment about a dozen other sprogs from around the resort. Despite becoming dizzy from all the huffing (that’s the inflating of the pool toys, I’ll point out), we all had a lot of fun with the water pistols and things.
With such an exhausting day, neither of us had much enthusiasm for putting a too much effort into dinner, so KFC and a pizza seemed just the ticket and that sufficed for our second evening meal here at the resort.
In another parenting success (I’m just racking them up lately), I somehow managed to convince the kids after dinner that for every minute that they spent helping to tidy up the place, they would earn one more minute of being up before going to bed. This worked a treat and the place is now really quite a bit tidier. Parenting level back to one thousand again J
Sandy and I are now relaxing in front of the TV and each with a screen to keep us company.