I have crawled back onto the internet though, and mostly because the new seasons of EVERYTHING are starting again. Supernatural has embarked on it's fifth (and final?) season which promises to be quite theological again, with the trademark gore, bromance, and dorky references (season two sees Dean make a flippant comment about a pit-stop at Mount Doom, for instance. Where does he find the time between saving the world from demons to see all these fantasy films?) which make it the best genre show on TV at present.
Sci-fi is busting out all over the local multiplex too, with the beautifully old-school Moon (reminded me of Sunshine only with more Sam Rockwell) being followed by District 9. The latter turned out to be extremely... satisfying. A thinky opener followed by some The Fly style horror and an action movie ending that left me thinking, for some reason, of Men in Black but with less slapstick. Prawn porn which I totally loved from start to finish. And this week I hope to see Surrogates with Bruce Willis (who hasn't left the house since he can't remember when, but seems to retain his lightening quick action-hero reflexes all the same, which is lucky).
I am at home at the moment, squinting at my own skin to see if I can find evidence of a tan. I just got back from a trip to Croatia, where I spent a lot of time asleep on a beach, and jumping out of my skin when fish bumped into my legs in the sea... I'm a bit of a pussy when it comes to swimming.
Absolute highlight? Going white-water rafting with six enormous Slovenian firemen, who didn't speak a word of English. This was in Omis, (see photo) which used to be a pirate fortress in the gorge made by the Cetina River. My lovely friend Gemma, which whom I was on holiday, was all for doing some rafting down the gorge, and since this was supposed to be the best way to see it, I was rather up for it too. So we went to see a lady offering trips, who said that if we could go right that second, and fill her boat, we could go half price. Uh, provided we didn't tell anyone she was giving us the deal. Dodgy? You bet, but we went anyway.
I was wearing a skirt, which I figured was an atrocious idea, so I went next door to this little touristy shop to see if I could pick up some shorts. The girl there didn't speak any English, but she gave me to understand that she had only one pair in the whole shop, which were some white cotton kids shorts. Desperate not to have to do water sports in my underwear, I took them. They turned out to fit (the perks of being titchy) but were so short that Kylie would have been too embarrassed to wear them in public. My arse was hanging out, but it was all I had, so I went rafting in my hotpants.
The Slovenians were lovely, in a rugby-player way, with our Croatian guide acting as occasional interpreter (sometimes, when they were laughing in a rather robust way and looking at us, he feigned an inability to find the correct words in English and had the decency to look rather embarrassed. Bless). It came as no surprise to Gemma and I to discover they were firemen. We seem to stumble upon firemen in every conceivable situation, which is quite a handy skill to have.
Rafting itself was brilliant. I managed to only inhale river water once, which was pretty good going, and completely avoided falling out of the boat. In fact, I was very impressed with this fact, as the guide was sweet but somewhat patronising. There was a lot of "don't worry girls, I'll put you near me so I can catch you" bullshit, which was well intentioned but quite amusing, seeing as I have never worried about my balance or grip in these situations (years of horse riding and some kayak and sailing experience mean I'm not afraid of failing either) and Gemma used to navigate rapids on a kayak during her days as an outdoor ed instructor. We kept this to ourselves though, and just gave each other amused looks across the raft.
We were also told that it was great for us to go with these firemen, as we wouldn't have to do much paddling. It turned out the guys couldn't paddle for shit and the guide had to keep telling them to watch us, and do it like we were doing it. Oh dear.
Anyway, during one particularly exciting set of rapids the boat tipped and started to flip. I managed to slide into the bottom where I would be safe, as did Gemma, who had to throw herself upwards to make it, whilst the Slovenian firemen hit the water and floated downstream. Cue much hilarity from our guide, who had us help him steer the raft to catch them before they hit the next lot of rapids, and some jokes about how the pretty little girls were considerably better at this than the bit strapping men.
During one set of rapids we missteered round a rock and I was slammed bodily against a tree. Which HURT, and caused me to squeal in surprise and pain, for which I was roundly mocked. I carried on paddling though!
There was a wonderful calm section through a forest, where I felt like I was in that bit in The Fellowship where they paddle down river from Lothlorien. Gemma informed me I was a massive geek, but I knew this already. Another slow slide through a canyon-like section of the gorge with sheer rock walls broken by the occasional waterfall was particularly impressive.
At the end of the trip, the Slovenian firemen drove us back to town, squished in the back of their van, making cracks about the improvements we'd all made in European relations thanks to being impressively composed English chicks who out-paddled them.
This week I also devoured Joe Hill's Heart Shaped Box as one of my holiday reads. It's amazing, a horror novel that is subtly scary and actually deserves to be called a page turner. I became an anti-social nightmare whilst reading this book. Also, I'm the kind of person who digs all the nerdy rock music references.
