Quality Time

Under the guise of “doing something nice together“, Emergency Contact tried to get me lost in a National Park.

We’d had some disagreements over the preceding few weeks about what constituted good couple’s entertainment. She maintained that going to Paris by herself and leaving me to hunt dust-bunnies for sustenance was bang on. Similarly, I felt that spending an entire afternoon on the couch, eating lemonade icy-poles, was domestic harmony.

After a full and frank discussion during which we appropriately mulled over each other’s points of view and carefully weighed up the merits of our individual needs, it was decided that I should join her on a walk from Spit Bridge to Manly. I was thrilled.

We went with a group of  EC’s mates and somehow while pacing along with one of them, Blonde Powerpuff Girl, the two of us got separated from the group. BPG is a keen runner and happy to move at a fair clip for hours at a time so it was not surprising that we might have accidentally put some distance between us and the main body of the group (containing EC). Then, after looking at a confusing sign with varying directions and distances on it, we decided that we had in fact taken an unnecessary scenic detour, adding kilometres to our walk, and that we were kilometres behind the group. So we piled on the pace, only to realise a little later that the main group had taken the same route as us and therefore we had managed to get even further ahead.

This was sad for me. When we had parted company, it was Emergency Contact’s turn to carry the backpack… which had my water, my phone and my wallet in it.

When we got to the end of the walk at the Manly Wharf, BPG and I sat and waited for the group. We shot the breeze about this and that. She shared the last of her water with me. We watched ferries going back to our side of the world leave, one after the other, and I reflected on what a nice couples afternoon EC and I had had.