As I'm sure you guessed, the visit to the rellies did not go as planned. First my uncle phoned to ask me to buy rolls as he was making his special hamburgers for my tea. Then my aunt phoned to say to be careful where I parked as the paddock (now for cars rather than horses) was completely waterlogged and if I didn't park in exactly the right place I would get bogged down and have to be towed out by a trator the following day (meaning I would have to stay overnight). Thereafter followed a conversation consisting of the likes of 'left as you drive in or left facing the house?' and 'bottom of the paddock near the house or bottom of the paddock near the shed?' and 'facing the trees to my right from the car or facing the trees to your right facing the road?'. In the end I parked as near to the packed driveway and bugger any following visitors.
Which brings me to the unlikely scenario of anybody visiting way out there in such miserable weather. If ever there was a day to spend at home sampling the eight flavours of Zooper Dooper Cosmic ice pops (Space Pineapple is my current favourite but Deep Space Lime and Blackcurrant Phaser follow closely behind) then yesterday was the day.
The half-in-jest remark about wellies from my aunt had unfortunately not been taken as seriously as it might have been. Not that I have a pair of wellies. I didn't need them in surburban Rochdale and had not considered them as shoe cupboard mates for my flimsy sandals and flip flops. Suffice it to say I am still wearing ingrained mud on my feet and have one less pair of serviceable sandals.
I squelched my way up to the shed (aunt and uncle say down to the shed but there is a slight hill to it so of course it should be up to the shed. However after further contemplation, perhaps the shed is longitudinally south of the house. That brings further thought that we are now 'down under' up is down and down is up. I'm not sure that proves my point or not so I will move swiftly on (yeah right! that'd be a first!).
Oh yeah! I forgot to mention that I forgot to drench myself in insect repellent so I had to buy some on the way out there and because it was pouring down when I got there I had to spray it on in the car resulting in choking, gasping, more choking and probable permanent damage to my lungs.
So I sat in the shed (where my aunt has an art studio) and we chatted for an hour or so and I spent much of my time keeping a wary eye out for slitherers, scutterers, and scrabblers. I do have to say that I have on numerous occassions seen kangaroos and wallabies looking through the shed windows or hopping about in the paddock on a sunny morning so its not all bad. Just mostly bad. I had reapplied the insect stuff and had only been bitten three times at this point.
Then we went (waded) down to the house, across the paddock and my uncle was, as promised making the tea. It was half past seven before I could start making excuses to leave. By now I had been bitten on my big toe and left elbow which are two places I
always get bitten and on the inside of my leg which is another of those places where it is impolite to scratch vigourously in public! The fact that I had been awake for nearly eleven hours seemed to do the trick for leaving excuses and my aunt offered to walk me to the car. Now to some people this can mean being waved off from the front door step, but out there it means being guided, with a torch, across the patio, through the trellis archway (spider web city), over the lawn and onto the paddock. Well the first thing to appear was a large black moth flying into my face as I opened the door. Now if you ask me (and I'm sure being a sympathetic reader, you would ask me), I would say there's hardly anything unusual about high pitched screaming if a large black moth flies in your face like a vampire bat emerging from a black shrouded coffin. Well there was no sympathy forthcoing from my aunt who told me to 'shut up and stop being stupid'. So I let her lead the way with the torch and I would vigourously deny that that the grip on the back of her shirt was tight enough to strangle her. So we're going round the path and there as bold as you please was a toad the size of a cat. Now I have to make quite clear that this was not your Disney toad with kindly blinking eyes, a big green smile and a little crown with kiss me quick written on it. Rather it was a snot and vomit coloured slimy, mean eyed toady looking (!) toad. My ensuing whimpering continued until we got to the car which mercifully slipped only a little as I made my determined way to the road. The creepy hand which was feeling around my knee turned out to be the car key ring and the devil creature ahead of me in the road soon revealed itself to be a possum simply passing the night away on the road in a rainstorm. I drove home, switched on all the lights and vowed to leave the house at night in the future only to bring in essential chocolate supplies and other provisions .
Today I spoke to my aunt who told me I wa a terrible wimp, a disgrace to all brave and adventurous migrants and that I am now longer allowed to visit in the dark again.
Well! There is a God and he is smiling down upon me today!!! 
