I never appreciated my feet. In the words of that famous song: your foot bone’s connected to your ankle bone and your ankle bone’s connected to your foot bone, your ankle bone’s connected to your shin bone and your shin bone’s connected to your knee bone…” and so on and so on until your standing on a chair blind drunk doing all the actions that go with it. But wow do we need all those song lines!
Anyhow – I managed to break my foot surfing a few weeks back whilst surfing with a Welshman called Seb! (Not sure why that’s important.) It was let’s be honest a small wave in comparison to what we were surfing the day before. As I did it I thought that’s the closest I’ll come to breaking my foot! So sat on the beach prodded it, wiggled it, etc Seb very kindly came out and checked on me and I told him not to worry…gave it a few minutes then paddled back out again only to do the first duck dive and feel my foot kind of splinter. Oops I thought.
When the ‘concerned’ Seb finally joined me at the car we drove off, dropped him at home, picked up my book from home and then off for an XRay and to meet several very young British Dr’s – one of them screamed when they saw a cockroach – on their first placement overseas. Another Doctor very kindly came back with THE ‘boot’ told me how to wear it and then decided to tell why I had too, it was broken. Bugger.
More painful than the foot was that this was two weeks before the surf trip of a lifetime 6 weeks in Indonesia and a once in a lifetime trip abroad a boat in the Mentawais to actually get good at surfing for a change! I can’t believe this had happened to me again! (I broke my hand two weeks before a surf trip to Morocco in 2010.) Still I count myself luckier than the guy next to me who had been bitten by a spider and his arm looked like it had a football attached to it!
So I settled into the couch for my final two weeks in Oz staring out at the sea and PUMPING waves – damn I hate having a view of the sea!
Anyhow to cut through all the boring whingeing which Kevin, Seb, Isabell, Matt and Hector took the brunt of I find myself in Indonesia trying not to walk far – get too drunk, or sunburnt whilst ignoring all the people zipping past on mopeds with surfboards.
Eight months is a long time to be somewhere so I’m not going to write about it I’ll just share some pictures and you can guess the stories – they were all good.
My stay in Australia – although undocumented here – would not be possible without the following people putting up with me: Kevin, Hector and Clare, Matt, Seb, Eve, Isabell, Laurs, Dan, Mark, Joey, Leah, Craig, Tom, Robbie, Pat, Tom, Alexa, Gemma, Tom, James, Fabio, Guy, Alex, Birdie, Tim, Lucy, Laura, Ashley, Mike, Jamie, Alice, Chelsea, Leon, Xanthe, Fede, Michael, Michelle, Luke, Olli, Elin, Alex, Zac, Jack, and of course the Goodall family; David and Babs, Nick and Alex + Lucy and Sophie, Ruth and Charlie!
Blimey why did I leave? Hope to see you all again sometime in the future.