Family Matters
Getting married entails taking on a whole new set of relations, a principle we are all aware of as a principle, but which we are not usually prepared for in practice, comparable, in a way, to taking the written exam for your permit vs. the road test for your license. This weekend, M. had volunteered us to drive the 10-year-old twin nephews, so we took them to Luna Park, sort of like taking your road test straight out onto the highway. We rode every ride, except the lame kiddie ones, and even turned over some of our cash to the carnies running the ring-toss type games (yes, the games are fixed; yes, I said so; yes, the kids wanted to try for the really, really huge stuffed toys but walked away satisfied with the meagre trash that looked like the broken off piece of something else that was bigger and maybe better but you’d never know because winning something worth the effort of beating a rigged game wasn’t on offer to begin with; we should have just handed them the coins and walked away, because then they wouldn’t have any reason to laugh, snickering behind their hands at the endless parade of suckers we joined – never mind, this aside is too bitter for the rest of the post, which is about how much fun we had: a lot). It’s been fifteen years or thereabouts since I was last at an amusement park, and that time I only rode about three rides before I was so nauseated I could do no more than turn green in response to any question put to me. It took longer this time, but my recovery was not complete for another 24 hours after. Surprisingly, it was a simple spinning ride rather than the high-in-the-air, upside-down ride that finished me, although I did come off the latter distinctly weakened from the experience, while having failed to enjoy seeing the harbour from the unique perspective offered thereby. The ferris wheel, I think, is forever more my ride of choice, although by that time, even the gentle swaying was a little much.

We followed our evening’s excursion the next morning with a trip to the movies. Originally planning to send the children home with traditional nightmares, we gave in to the boys’ peer-pressure-sourced pleadings and went to see The Day After Tomorrow, which didn’t include seeing Sydney destroyed, focussing instead, of course, on the northern hemisphere, so that all I could think was that at four stories, we might have ridden out the tsunami that floods NYC, and because we had a fireplace, we might even have made it through the ionospheric hurricane that initiates the flash-freeze of the world’s top half. Bad science, as the critics say? Sure. Clichéd disaster movie? Yes, you bet. Cringe-worthy, a lot of the time. The effects are good, though, for the most part, and the homeless man’s dog survives, and Dick Cheney becomes President but has a change of heart from evil to good (that’s the science fiction part), so it was entertaining at least, and the kids loved it. They also loved Holes, a much more complex movie, which we watched to wind down after Luna Park.

In for a penny, in for a pound, as the saying goes; so I expect it won’t be long before we entertain the boys again. I don’t mind. They were bright, energetic, nice to the cat, so they’re welcome any time.