Day 539 | Onkaparinga Recreation Park: just out of the suburbs
48 km | zzOz total: 17,030 km
After 15 nights in a comfy bed it was finally time to move on.
Mary has been entirely generous with the accommodation, I needed the first week just to orientate myself with the real world that everyone else inhabits and give the body time to recover, the second week was more productive.
Mary’s in the midst of renovations of the painting kind which she is doing herself, no assistance from my part needed, wanted, in between sorting out 14 curtains for someone, ie, it’s a hive of enthusiasm.
I’m being trained in the social skills necessary when re-entering civilisation, years of living with feisty women might have trained me to always lower the toilet seat but apparently my eyesight has deteriorated, my aim is amiss, habits have gone astray from many days living in a tent, although later I discover when flushing with the seat up the vortex ejects some minor splashes from the bowl. I’m a bit messy in the bathroom when clipping my hippy locks, and the kitchen is despoiled by a drip of porridge, but a number of times shaving has not resulted in approbation.
Overall we get on fine, we’re both middlish children of large families, well socialised and learned from an early age how to get along with others, indeed we are rather chatty.
Mary stirs me up by telling me she’s interested in Scientology and starts some research, good ol’ Google and Wikipedia, my retort is why would you want to let strangers from another country tell you how you are required to live your life. She has the distinct ability to ignore any of my conversation that doesn’t accord with her world view, as with others it’s very seldom that the sensible shoes advice I offer is acted on.
One thing that has impressed me is her skill in operating her technology, usually a smart phone and small tablet sized laptop simultaneously, both while sitting in front of the TV, texts coming in, and shooting out, on the phone with the necessary research being done on the laptop.
It’s an extraordinary, and to these eyes, surreal, change to life that the rest of the world has embraced while I’ve been pedalling way out remote.
There’s a whole new technological realm to be upskilled once I settle more permanently.