Not much changes here and hence, there isn't much of interest to write about. My last rambling post is proof of my efforts to make something out of nothing. When something interesting happens, I usually rush to my laptop to describe it for the friends and family who share my adventures with me. Unless I happen to be have been too drunk to remember anything that actually happened. As per usual, I won't let an absence of facts get in the way of a yarn though.
It was Sandwich mans 22nd birthday. I had already given away the cake surprise by loudly suggesting it should have been a sandwich instead. With my popularity in free-fall because of my big mouth, I spent three very slow hours of work time making up a birthday card. Everyone signed the back of card / piece of scrap cardboard and a sandwich party was penciled in for 3pm the following day.
Unknown to women unconcerned by such an event, 3pm happened to be half a quarter into the AFL grand final. Therefor, no males would be attending the sandwich event. As the only Australian present, I spent half the game cheering for the underdog Hawks, and the other half explaining the rules to everyone. As the game and the Hawks lead progressed, the cheering became longer and louder and the explanations became shorter and less descriptive. Beer consumption increased proportionately too.
By the end of the game the hawks had won, everyone was pissed and I also pocketed $5 for picking the Norm Smith medalist, or Best player of the day. Beer and circumstances had me wound up like I had been a Hawks supporter all my life. Thankfully the sandwich party was starting at a more appropriate time and my enthusiastic outbursts could be somewhat concealed amongst the crowd. Especially when said crowd was more interested in Jagermeister than sandwiches, possibly because cucumber seemed to be the main sandwich ingredient. Obviously I chose to forgo such a blasphemous example of a vegetable and condemned myself to total inebriation by not eating anything at all.
Things got pretty hazy from there and I have no way of being able to organise the snapshots of memory into a remotely chronological order. I soldiered on for another six hours somehow, and did so much damage to my reputation of being a responsible drunk that the expression will never be uttered again.
I don't remember making it back to my own bed, but that is exactly were I found myself when the hostel owners sought revenge for hours of missed sleep by doing a fire drill at 7am. Being able to see the fire exit from my bed, and not being able to see any smoke, I decided to sit the inferno out, even though the alarms screeching was millions of hot pokers in my alcohol adled brain. 30 seconds later it stopped and the owners came charging through berating everyone for their performance. Unaware we were being judged for fire-preparedness, being told we were all dead by manical staff almost came to proving their morbid claims correct except for who the victims would be.
So we got up and prepared for work while everyone wished they had of been cindered to save them from the hangovers. A day that starts like that is never going to be a good day and it got disturbingly worse when the bus driver accidentally backed the bus over a sleeping Legend. Having spent a good part of the last 5 years finding shelter in the shade of the bus, it finally got the better of him. At 18 years old, he had had a very good innings and it deserved to end in a more befitting manner. R.I.P. Old boy. Life is cruel sometimes and a sullen silence settled over everyone as this obviously played on the minds of people hangover and facing a day of work.
Things didn't improve any when we got to work either. There was no tomatoes to pack as there had been a major accident in the fields. Some Korean yobo had tried to go drifting with a trailer loaded with 11 pickers and some full tomato bins. A long fishtail marked where the drift went from stupidity to life threatening and the gravel road ended up wearing enough skin to build another human. Plenty of bones were broken, cuts sustained and two of the most unfortunate had ambulance rides to the hospital. Unless Mr. Korean Schumacher was a Hawks fan he had no excuse for driving in such a manner, and was lucky that his job termination wasn't accompanied by a savage beating.
By now adrenaline was surging as everyone was on high alert at the gruesome potential the day seemed to possess. Luckily enough work was quiet enough to allow everyone to work so carefully that not even a blister was sustained for the rest of the day. Interestingly enough, I have gone from doing 67 hours in a week to doing 25. With a spate of unfortunate incidents like this, I think I'd much rather stay in bed wrapped in cotton wool anyway.
