Close Call... Again!

It's the second time it's done that. Damned, I was sure this time though. What you see is a satellite picture of the cyclone that DID NOT pass over us. It, bastard, has gone off prancing to Australia... Ozzies get all the fun it seems. I say second time because right about this month last year we got a close call with mister cyclone.

The difference this year is that I was ready and equipped. I've got a 45 gallon drum full of cement, a climbing harness and some very stout rope. The idea behind all this is what I have dubbed "Inverse Kite Surfing". Basically, I put on the harness and rope myself to the barrel with about 20 feet of extra rope and wait for the 220km/h winds to pick me up. Simple really. Sort of like para-sailing but without the boat or the parachute. The only bug I haven't worked out yet is what happens once the winds die down?

I've been reading some books by Terry Pratchet which I think has the same humour for fantasy that Douglas Adams had for si-fi. Anyway, this little bit came to my attention as being exactly how being away for a year makes me feel. Now, I know the dangers of using somebody else's words to describe personal feelings and that someone somewhere will get the wrong idea but what the hell:

Mort had never really felt homesick, possibly because his mind had been too occupied with
other things. But he felt it now for the first time – a sort of longing, not for a place, but for a
state of mind, for being just an ordinary human being with straightforward things to worry
about, like money and sickness and other people. . . .

On the other hand I'm usually having way to much fun to be homesick but sometimes... sometimes I wish, metaphorically, that my bed was somewhere else than a tin can out in the scrub half a world away from where, I think, my life should be progressing.

When that happens I usually sit in a dark and quiet corner until it has passed and carry on the business of not having a fixed address.