It was a long week at work last week and so on Saturday night Pete and I took ourselves out to dinner in Southport. They sat us tucked round the corner in a little darkened alley with a big mood lighting candle on the table, very romantic I thought. I joked to Pete that this was where they put the ugly people so other diners wouldn’t be put off entering and he pointed to the big window next to us looking out onto the street and said on the contrary, we were window eye candy to attract more clientele, we bantered on a bit and drank wine till the food arrived.
Just as I was slicing into my steak a MASSIVE cockroach came scurrying across the stone floor towards my feet. It was the length of my pointer finger and it scuttled high off the ground on horny spiked legs. It made the bush roaches we get at mums look positively tiny. Shit I am getting crawly just writing about it. I lifted my feet and kept my eye on it until it disappeared behind a pot plant and praying that it would remain in the dark corner recess went back to my meal.
Unfortunately this was not the case, within minutes I felt it crawling up my outer calf and leapt up to see it fall onto the paved wall level with my knee. I ran round the table behind Pete and said “I’m sorry, I can’t I’m sorry”. The waiter came over and said ‘what’s the problem?’ and I pointed out the cockroach now making a hasty retreat back to it’s pot plant. “Can you please get rid of it?!’” I begged and he bent down and as he scooped it up in his cloth napkin I saw it filled his fist. Ahh shit, shit, shit I thought and reluctantly went back to my meal feeling itchy and scratchy all over. Pete gallantly swapped seats with me so I now sat in a little pool of light from the bar and he took the dark corner that I now felt sure was INFESTED with roaches.
Just for the record, I am not short of stamping on the buggers and have squished and removed many ‘big’ roaches under protective swathes of toilet paper in the past, the problem here was:
1. no toilet paper to hand
2. I only had on thin ballet pumps from cotton on that were falling apart at the toes, I felt certain that one stomp in these shoes would leave me with roach guts all over the sole of my foot.
3. I was in public and therefore couldn’t let rip my um… ‘battle cry’ that was a necessary part of the squishing.
As conversation resumed, somewhat tersely, another roach came scuttling out of the light towards my feet but this time I leapt up off my chair in a flash. “NO, nope, no I can’t do it, nope” I said in my most authoritive voice as I picked up my glass of wine and moved to a spare table in a well lit part of the restaurant. Pete came trailing after me seconds later, miffed that I was causing a scene, I pointed out to him that most other woman would have screamed and made a horrendous fuss and he finally realised I was being pretty tame about the whole thing . We got a cap for our half bottle of wine, threw it in my handbag and left. Jesus it was awful. Like big scuttling rats. Fudgeee-magola. Not going back to that restaurant.
Still we managed to cheer ourselves up by heading to the park over the road that we’ve been eyeing up for some time now. They had a flying fox that could take our weight, a bicycle train race track and a big circular basket swing that we stood on either side of and tried to create momentum by bending and straightening our knees. As we slowly started to swing I got impatient and so swept back full force knees bent, butt to the sky and as I came rocketing forwards I went face first across the swing into Pete’s white shirt and left a big smear of tinted sunscreen down it. Hahahahha.
Finally we walked down to the cinema and saw ‘Funny people’ which was good but most of the funny bits had already been shown on the trailer. When we left the cinema there was another dust storm rolling in on 30kph winds and it was like there had been a nuclear explosion, everyone had disappeared, it was eerie. I freaked myself out asking Pete what he would do if a mass of zombies started spilling out behind us. He was very practical and said he’d pull down the cinema roller door. ‘Boring’, I said. ‘So’ he said and that was that.
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