Scary Saturdays...

Ah...Saturday. Sleeping in, clean winter sun bathing our verandah, good coffee, newspapers and Carrot cake. My hubby, feet up and warm, the kid’s laughter crackling in the background...strolls down the street hand in hand and more coffee or chai in lazy coffee lounges where friends drop by and chat...and sometimes where the children grace us with their presence and eat plates of sushi or hot chips. The feeling that time can stretch as far as you want it to and the knowledge that no one thing is actually required of you today!

This weekend we popped across the road for coffee and cake and were joined by “stop hassling me” our nearly eighteen year old son. He was in semi dejected mode (he has the adolescent mood swing to blame here) and a realisation that cheffing is not all he would like out of life and that now...oh dear he has to rethink the journey and find a new goal that will get him up in the morning...but this blog is not about his youthful woes but rather about his youthful folly!! He was waiting like the rest of us for our Beveridge and out of his restlessness he toyed with his car keys, which he had brought along because he was going out to see his girlfriend after our family moment...and he pushed the key ring onto his finger where it obligingly sat and would under no circumstances be removed...the finger was getting a little pale and so was my son, the more he twisted and I encouraged him ( albeit amidst the odd muffled laugh and roll of the eye) the more outraged his finger became until it was an angry red colour haloed out by white...at this point I really did become worried...people were starting to look at the three of us, transfixed over his finger and uttering comments like ‘go on push it a bit harder. You can do it...just swivel it a little, hey spit on it why don’t you?’

Eventually just as I was convinced we needed to head home and engage some soap and water in the exercise, it slid off...and the coffee arrived! Phew...

It was a bit of a distraction and a reflection on life really, which always throws up the unexpected just when you think everything is boxed in a nice calm space and predictable as anything...like the Saturday same son ran upstairs screaming with steam burns to the greater part of his torso, or the Saturday ‘I’m busy” put her arm through the glass front door, or the Saturday hubby concussed himself with the surf board...or the Saturday Miss independent got whacked in the knee by her horse’s hoof or the Saturday our son( again!!), came skidding off the front end of his bike and managed to graze his whole face, or the Saturday Miss nearly independent had her foot squashed under her horse’s hoof, or the time Miss Independent broke her shoulder and rolled her car and the time ‘don’t hassle me needed stitches in his hand or the time he burnt his palm on the fireplace or Miss nearly independent fell off the ferry and nearly drowned...

Come to think of it Saturdays are quite scary.....and although they lull one into a soporific idle it is all only a ruse to convince us of the simpleness of our lives...which in their every moment are full of possibilities...ignorance though is a kind of bliss and its best to feign just such bliss when sipping on one’s coffee so as not to spoil the moment...but deep inside you can rest in the knowledge that coffee is adrenalin pumping and should an emergency of any kind arise, you will be ready!!