The Substance of Things Hoped For

There are many rules that have been observed here before. Here's another one: nothing ever works out exactly as you plan it. I'm sure the winners of darwin awards would agree. I'm fairly certain that none of them planned the dire accidents (or should that be acts of stupidity?) that landed them on the list of winners - or even honourable mentions. That said, I think there is a certain amount of inevitability in death following on from the idea to step inside a giant helium balloon with your girlfriend, but without the help of an oxygen tank. Foresight had nothing to do with last weekend, however - although it probably should have had a bit more of an impact on the four days of couch time I've just had trying to recover from, in part, my own stubborn stupidity.

Honestly? I'd been looking forward to the weekend for weeks - more than the normal "everybody's working for the weekend" type longings (incidentally, how great was that song?? Everybody wants a little romance? Everybody needs a second chance? Gold...). More like "Friday on my mind" - Wednesday just won't go, Thursday goes too slow, I've got Friday on my mind. Catch was the horrendous cough that sprang up somewhere between the never-ending Thursday night and Friday morning. Even the obliging people doing a presentation on a type of insulation used on pre-cast concrete buildings struggled to keep my attention (who would have thought? Bubble wrap as insulation! Wonder how much fun the builders could have with that? I've even met a profoundly deaf guy who loved popping bubble wrap) with the free lunch they provided. Little surprise that I was home and tucked up in bed long before the normal time for a night out.

I must be getting old though. Everybody in the bar we went to looked about 12, and neither I nor either of my friends could stop commenting on the indecent clothing the younger girls - or the apparently ill-fitting underwear, and how appropriate it was for the girls to be moshing like that. We sounded exactly like our parents did when we first started going out back in the day...given that my Mum dropped us off so none of us had to drive, we fitted right in, until the point where we walked in the door and realised we weren't flashing nearly enough cleavage.

The only thing to make old bones feel better is a massage. Even if the masseur, who is charging you an insane amount of money for half an hour of absolute bliss keeps telling you that you need to come more often so she can work out the painful knots she's finding in your flu-affected shoulders. Bliss, I tell you, bliss. And lunch afterwards, with the nice eye-candy working behind the bar just proved that some things can, and do, live up to expectations.

Which makes it a shame that the night that followed was what seemed, at the time, to be a dismal flop.

In spite of being in full 40s glam hair and make-up, it turns out that I was somewhat less than perfect for the 1940s themed Swing dancing ball I went to. See, I tried to make a modern wrap dress do the job, and it simply wasn't made for dancing - or not for spinning, at any rate, becasue everytime I turned quickly, not only would the dress fly open to reveal a large expanse of leg, the ties holding the dress closed would wrap themselves around my poor unsuspecting partner. Combine that with one particularly uncoordinated guy(honestly, he was. He was worse than me - quite the achievement, generally speaking) and a fairly quick song, and you have yourself a nice little mix to keep the old guys on the sidelines fanning themselves everytime the move-challenged guy spun me around - which was a lot. I have never, ever been so glad of the little shorts (Ok, almost hot pants - on any other persont hey would be) that I normally reserve for wearing when I'm playing hockey but luckily thought to put on that night. It did, however, make a handy excuse to stop dancing for a moment and "adjust myself" to I was revealing a whole lot less!

As fun as that was, I was back in the car and on the way home by 10:30 - before the clubs on nearby Chapel St had even started to get interesting - although there were enough people out and about to raise their eyebrows at a couple of girls in 40s gear walking down the street.

The upshot of all this is the cough I'm still nursing. I'm not going to say that there's anything wrong with sounding like a 50 year smoker with emphysema - I mightthink it, however. It's more that the coughing does interfere with one's sleep so...and the redness subsequent to the coughing is awfully difficult to mask with even the best pressed powder. Not to mention what the other people in the train carriage with you of a morning think when they hear you bringing up a lung - or at the very least sounding like you're about to.

So things don't always work out how you plan them. I now have a quiet weekend planned for this one coming up. Only a couple of family functions and a whole lot of essay writing (any tips on last minute resources on either the representation of "otherness" Merchant of venice and Othello, or the works and influence of Edgar Allen Poe would be much appreciated). But who knows...maybe this weekend will exceed expectations? I'm certain it will all even out somewhere. And if nothing else, there's a miracle in the offing in the sporting world - my decidedly average hockey team looks like making it into the finals, and my football team has levered itself off the bottom of the ladder, and beat Collingwood into the bargain. What is the world coming to?