Father’s Day

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Issy and I both seem to have caught colds. Issy blames me for hers. I have a slightly different view of events, but she sounds a lot worse than I do so I don’t feel brave enough to argue.

It’s both Sunday and Father’s Day here. The Sabbath is strictly observed here in deeply religious Samoa; the whole country is closed for the day, so we plan a day of doing very little. We tried to guilt our offspring into believing that it was Father’s Day the world over and that they should therefore shower me with love and gifts, but it seems that they haven’t fallen for that little ruse. There’s also a public holiday for Father’s Day here tomorrow. I think this is something that should be instituted in Australia as well; only for fathers of course, and perhaps we could also grant their offspring a couple of hours break to give them time to rain gifts upon their beloved padres and make them breakfast in bed.

The path along the sand to breakfast is criss-crossed with thousands of tracks that look like they’ve been made by people riding bikes after overdosing on the local brew. As we look more closely we see a hermit crab with one of these tracks trailing behind it. I think that we may have inadvertently murdered a few hundred of these poor unsuspecting creatures as we’ve traipsed back and forth to the restaurant. I’m glad that they’re not bigger or we’d be deeply concerned about a mass invasion and getting our toes chewed off as we sleep.

I think it’s important that I try to learn something new every day, and this being just another one of those days I pick up a handy little hint as I queue behind an elderly gent to use the toaster. It seems that if you put your small plastic container of frozen butter on top of the toaster while you wait for your toast to cook, it will be melted by the time the toast comes out.

A French girl in the queue quizzes the staff about what’s in the bread. She tells them that she’s allergic to bananas. I didn’t know that this was a real thing. I hate bananas with a passion, and I used to tell people that I was allergic to them so that they wouldn’t try to slip them into anything they fed me.

We spend the day swimming and lazing on the beach. The tide is very low; so low that quite a lot of the coral is now sticking out of the water. I didn’t think that coral could survive out of water. I wonder if the coral here in Samoa is leading the world in preparing for climate change. Now that I think of it, I think that climate change will actually make the sea level go up. Maybe the coral here in Samoa is trailing the world. Speaking of trailing the world, we love Samoa, but the wifi here is really bad. The internet and phone reception is intermittent at best, and to get it at all we need to stand out in the open well away from any palm trees or buildings, preferably in the middle of the night when no one else in the country is trying to connect, and pay an exorbitant fee for the privilege. At least the mobile phone calls from anonymous telemarketers in outback Africa have stopped since we arrived here.

I think that Issy needs something to occupy her after a day of inactivity. She seems to think it’s very funny to flick water at me with her straw while I try to enjoy a peaceful dinner.

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