I don't want my holiday to end, although it is probably a good thing that it soon will as I am getting so relaxed that I am almost slipping into a coma. I am pretty much living the life of
a Lotus eater. I caught up on some sleep last night, but by 5pm I was practically asleep on my sun lounger and so full of apathy that even reading seemed like too much effort.
I am glad I stayed awake though, because as I was heading back to my room I saw a group of people standing by the shore, looking excited and throwing morsels of food into the water. I went down to have a look at what was causing the commotion - to begin with I thought they were just feeding the herons that were swooping around after a day, no doubt, of standing very still on the shore with their wings at crazy and intimidating angles. But when I got to the water's edge I saw that the sea was teeming with life, most notably with maybe a dozen stingrays who were coming right up into the shallows to be fed by hand. Although I had to concentrate with all my might to stop myself shouting, "You killed Steve Irwin!" at the strange blobs of rubber I stood and watched for a good ten minutes. It was fascinating and these creatures are probably the most alien looking things that I have seen out and about in the real world, like slightly rubbishly made Dr Who creatures - a clump of flesh with little bitey mouths underneath and a long tail protruding from the back like the annoying tightly wound pony tail on the head of a 1980s University lecturer. They came so close to the edge of the sea that it felt a bit like they were Sea Devils trying to make it on to land and you could more than believe that they would be able to swivel up the sand if they just gave themselves one last push (in fact later that night I would dream about one of them doing exactly that). So I stood at some distance and observed, because I didn't want them to leap up like sea triffids and sting me in the chest. If they could take down Irwin they could take down any of us. But the other human idiots went down amongst them, touching them and pampering them. Didn't they know what these creatures are capable of one in a billion times?
There was also, I am pretty sure, a small shark swimming amongst all the marine wildlife. It was only a couple of feet long but it was impressive to see it close up.
Although I am, as usual, attempting levity with my Steve Irwin gags (I was going to say barbs, but that would be inappropriate) I am suddenly reminded that in the aftermath of his unlucky death some of the more stupid Australians (and imagine how stupid that must make them) actually decided to take retribution on the stingrays for the death of their hero. As if somehow the stingrays would be able to connect the attack by one of their number to this stingray pogrom and think more carefully about instinctively lashing out again. This blind desire for vengeance, even if it only exists in a tiny proportion of idiots is one of the principal reasons that our species is fucked. I wonder after a devastating tsuanmi whether those same kind of men (and I bet it was all men) went out and thumped the ocean or attempted to evaporate it with a big magnifying glass. Or if someone died of skin cancer would they fly into space and try and kick the sun in the nuts?
A few members of the nightmare family (and there's no point in moving rooms away from them, partly because there are only a couple of nights left and partly because there is no escape from them on the island. They are only a mild inconvenience in any case and not capable of spoiling this amazing holiday- though right on cue, there's another one of them hacking up in the water outside) had hired a little pedallo boat so that they could get a better view of the feeding and swirling stingrays. If the creatures had the intelligence to strike at will they could have taken the whole boat load out and then stingrays around the world would have been rewarded for their services to humanity. But the stingrays did not have the moral compasses required to differentiate the good humans from the bad ones. They just bided their time, perhaps waiting for the moment that the whole human race was down at the water's edge so they could take the lot of us out in one fell swoop and rule the world.
Those Australian pricks were right all along. This is a war. In years to come they will be seen as the first freedom fighters in the sea creatures versus land creatures war (with whom will the amphibians side? It could make the crucial difference). But for now they are just pricks. Massive, massive, ridiculous pricks.
I was up for another award tonight and wondered if after 20 years of no awards I might win two in a week. It was a justgiving award acknowledging the work I have been doing with SCOPE over the last seven years and though I am delighted to get any publicity for the charity that I can I felt a bit uncomfortable about the idea of even being nominated for an award. All you lovely idiots who have donated the money over the years are the people who should be really getting the thanks. So thanks. And congratulations on your nomination. In fact if you want to claim the nomination as your own and haven't yet donated then all you have to do
is give some money here.
In the case of this award I am more than delighted to return to my old runner-up ways and congratulate
Emily Thackray who (if you read about what she's done) I think you would be insane to conclude that she didn't deserve it a lot more than me, with my self-serving programme fund! I mean I have had to occasionally carry some quite heavy boxes of programmes a short distance, but I think Emily might argue (possibly correctly) that her journey has been a little bit more impressive than mine!
