Pain And Knobs In Melbourne

Yesterday I flew home after a whirlwind 27 hours in Melbourne. I'd flown down to conduct an 'In Conversation' with my friend, the author Kylie Ladd, which consisted of Kylie and I sitting on high stools in front of an audience as I fired questions at her. This worked out very well for both of us. Kylie got to talk about her fabulous new book 'Last Summer', and I got to indulge my Oprah fantasies, only without any tiresome speculation about my sexuality, or the need to hand out cars to the gathered crowd.

The entire trip went almost perfectly. I had an excellent time after the 'In Conversation' at the nearby pub with Kylie and various friends from the online world, and then more fun the following day having breakfast with Kylie and her son, and later lunch with my aunt and cousin.

The problems came in between. And yes, there are always problems at some point. At least, there always are for me.

Kylie and I got back to her house about midnight, which is rather late for me. We'd also been drinking very heavily, which in my case meant two glasses of Cab Sav. It took me a little while to fall asleep in Kylie's daughter's bed, but once I did I slept the deep slumber of one pleased with a job well done, much as I suspect Oprah does after a satisfying interview with Tom Cruise.

Suddenly, at an unknown hour in the middle of the night, I woke with an agonising pain in my right eye. It felt like someone had taken a shard of glass, inserted it beneath my eyelid, and was punching my eye with a blunt fist. I was blinded with the pain, except that I was blinded anyway, because I couldn't open my eyes.

I covered my right eye with my right hand and opened the left eye. To my surprise, I was blinded anyway. Kylie's daughter's room was pitch black. I put my left hand out in front of me to feel for a landmark and groped around in the dark. I literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face, not that I could actually put my hand in front of my face, because one hand was clutching my right eye and the other was feeling around in the dark.



Eyepatch: Attractive and practical

I knew that I had to get to the bathroom, to look in the mirror and try to flush whatever it was out of my eye. Before I could get to the bathroom, however, I had to get out of the bedroom. And this wasn't easy in the utter blackness with an excruciating pain in my eye.

I floundered around endlessly until finally my hand landed on the door knob. It was round and large, which confused me a little as I remembered the knob as being horizontal and thin. Still, I didn't care about morphing door knobs at that point. My eye was burning and I had to get out of there.

I tried turning the handle but nothing happened, which could have had something to do with the fact that I was turning it with my left hand, and perhaps was turning it in the wrong direction. I tried to focus, foggy with sleep and pain, but to no avail. Finally I just pulled the damn thing and fell into Kylie's daughter's closet.

I was tempted to give up, but the pain in my eye was searing, and I needed to fight on. I negotiated myelf backwards back onto the bed and tried again. I plotted out the room in my mind, remembering that the door was to the left of the cupboard. I held on to the cupboard and felt my way along the wall, frogmarching through the bedroom until I hit the door. Thank god!

Now, I knew I had found the door because I could feel its outline, and Kylie's daughter's dressing gown hanging on a hook on the back. My problem now was to find the handle, because there didn't seem to be one. Or at least, my left hand couldn't find it.

After about a year, my hand found the door. Finally,with overwhelming relief, I tripped into the hall and made my way into the bathroom. Once there, I turned on the light, which was another shocking mistake. I nearly fell over in fright and agony as the glaring light burned into my one exposed retina.

When my eye finally adjusted I began the horrible task of flushing out my eye. It didn't work. I couldn't see anything in there, and it was making the pain worse. I tried crying, but that felt bloody uncomfortable too. I considered waking Kylie up, but I didn't know what she could do except for putting a bandaid on my eye, so I decided to let her sleep.

In the end, I took a couple of Panadol and went back to bed. By the morning, my eye was still sore but manageable. Today, it is all better.

Of course, there's something to learn from every experience and I learned something from this. For one thing, my body is utterly unpredictable and never fails to surprise with its range of ailments and discomforts.

For another thing, I should always travel with a night light. I'll never know when eye might need it.

The Naked Husband

I'm coming to you live from Melbourne (at least, my upper body is; my feet have been dead with cold since I touched down at Tullamarine Airport).

I came down to temperate *insert snorts of laughter* Melbourne on Tuesday to give a keynote address at a charity function. My flight was delayed an hour by the Melbourne fog (at least, that's what they told us, and it's certainly a more comforting thought than 'for the pilot to sober up'), so I spent some time in Sydney airport browsing around the shops. I bought a scarf for extra warmth, a shawl for even more warmth, and a ring to remind me that my fingers still existed once they were dangling numb and frozen from my arms. All have served their purpose well.

I was put up at a lovely hotel, The Royce, although as delightful as it was I will never be staying there again. I was given a faulty key, and was forced to complain at the front desk, then suffered the hideous mortification of discovering that the only thing faulty in the whole failure-to-open-door manouvre was my brain. So as delightful as the room was, and as warm and welcoming the service, I can never return to an establishment which sees me to be the fool I really am.

On Tuesday evening I had dinner with my cousins, all 300,000 of them. We crammed into a Chinese restaurant and ate dumplings and compared photos of our 30 billion children, approximately none of whose names I still remember. (Okay, I remember two of their names. But they have really cute names. NOT that the others don't have cute names. I'm sure they do. I just can't remember them.)

On Wednesday morning I woke up and went outside, which was obviously an insane thing to do as it was about minus 100% and utterly freezing. (And yes, this is an exaggeration, but really only very slight.) So I ran back inside again, wrapped myself in scarf and shawl and ring, and waited to be picked up to go and give my talk. 

My speech was quite successful, even the bits in which I wasn't talking about sex or vomit or breasts. And I didn't even need to use the special hand signal I had arranged with my aunt, in whch she had to laugh and applause rapturously whenever I touched my forehead.

Later, I did a book signing, where happily every single member of the audience approached me and bought my book (using 'every single' in it's lesser known sense of 'a small proportion'). Then I ate lots and lots of chocolate cake in my post-speech rush, because - as is commonly known - after a period of excitement nothing contains calories for at least an hour and a half.

After the function I was picked up by my darling friend Kylie Ladd and transported to her home, where I would be spending the night. We were met there by my other dear friend TheNDM, who took me out for coffee whilst Kylie attended to mundane things such as child rearing and finding me a towel.

When TheNDM and I returned, we chatted for a while with Kylie, and were joined shortly afterward's by Kylie's husband Craig. After introductions, and two minutes of chit chat, Craig retired to the bathroom for a shower, before appearing several minutes later stark naked in search of soap. Well, the guy has a great arse, but I probably didn't need to see it quite so soon. After all, I have known many of my friend's husbands for over a decade and are yet to see them stark naked. Still, it certainly accelerated the intimacy. I immediately felt comfortable brushing my teeth in the lounge room, announcing I needed to do a wee, and prancing naked in front of Kylie's family (although I refrained from doing the latter for fear of startling their neighbours).

I later fell asleep in Kylie's daughter's bed, surrounded by a team of Littlest Petshop centurians, who kept me safe all night, except for when I stepped on one on my way to the loo. All in all, it was a most successful visit.

Though when I come back again, I'm going to insist that Craig keeps his pants on at all times. Either that, or he can carry around a bar of soap. Intimacy is good, but I'm starting to think Kylie and I are close enough.