Bad Morning

This morning was among the worst wake-up calls ever: Kate running into my room and flinging herself full-length on my bed, which I was sleeping in. I went "Ack Ack Gahhhh" and hid under the covers, then she yanked them off and shouted, with no little excitement, "I was going to make you a cup of tea and I put the bag in the cup but then just as I was about to pour in the hot water two flies flew in the cup and started mating in it!!"

"What?"

Right up there. Here, in no particular order except the order in which I remember them, are the Top Five Worst Awakenings Of My Life:

5: That one

4: Waking up from a nightmare in which my upper lip was grotesquely swollen and running to the bathroom mirror to reassure myself that it was only a dream...only to find that a bug had bitten me in my sleep and my lip was in fact grotesquely swollen. Terrifying! And I looked like Homer Simpson for a week.

3: Either of the two times I've left my alarm on silent by accident, woken up at 10am, and had that awful sick moment when you realise you're two hours late for work and there's nothing you can do about it.

2: Waking up on the last morning of band contest in Auckland, still a) wearing a cocktail dress and heels and b) quite drunk, to very shrill-voiced cornet player shouting "The bus leaves in five minutes!"

1: Waking up at 7.30am, after an hour of sleep, in an extremely over-wrought emotional state and completely exhausted, to realise that my bus left in five minutes from somewhere on the other side of town, and I was moving from Christchurch to Wellington that day and had connections to make. And I was drunk and in Dunedin, on The Longest Day Of My Life.

Have I told you the story of TLDOMY? No? (Yes?) Well, it is a Cautionary Tale featuring a Man (who played the Euphonium; need I say more?) a lot of alcohol; a missed bus; sobering up on a plane; moving CITIES; the ferry, and a backpackers. I was going to tell the entire story, in my usual amusing manner, but it would be a long story & I am tired. If there is much clamouring to hear it then perhaps it is a story for another day; but if not you will have to make do with...yes! This graph.


Anyway, poor start aside (mistyped poor as 'porn' there, which is a different story entirely), it was quite a good day - I went to the museum, partially to see Fred & Myrtle's Paua House and also because my mother made me. Fred & Myrtle's Paua House was a tourist attraction for 40 years or so - a retired couple ran it, and it was open 7 days a week, 8 hours a day. They took their 70th wedding anniversary off, but that was it. They didn't charge, and any donations people gave were donated to charities. When they died, their living room was uplifted and installed in the Christchurch Museum. Apparently the whole paua house thing started when Myrtle told Fred to get his polished paua shells off the living room floor, because they were getting in the way of the vacuum cleaner. Fred, displaying a slight passive-aggressive streak, did this:



Which sure showed Myrtle.