Slug SLIME.

More stories about travelling around the UK this summer. At one point we headed for Wales. We spent a day romping around the lush, misty Welsh hills.... which are unbelievably gorgeous, especially in the rain. Atmospheric and... *magical*

Towards evening we went to hang out with our friend Brian (who used to play in my band back in the day - yeah, I'm a muso - and is an awesome guitarist who has even played with Marianne Faithful, how's that for name dropping). Anyways, we made our way back to his place.

Walking in, I took off my coat and boots, and suddenly found myself standing on something soft and squishy.

So I pull off my sock and there's this cute little slug curled up on it, hoping I won't notice.

Being basically kind-hearted, I gave the little guy a flying lesson into the neighbour's garden; stay tooned for a future animated post about that.

Days passed, and I forgot about El Sluggo. My laundry accumulated in my luggage and we eventually returned to Penzance, into the open arms of my MIL and her washing machine!

The sock got tossed into the wash with everything else and the machine did it's thing. Then the MIL pulled out my now soaking wet socks to hang dry, gave them a shake, and cheerfully proclaimed: "SLUG SLIME."

And guess what folks? It doesn't wash out. I even put the socks through the Extreme Cycle now we're back in Montreal. It dries up okay but as soon as the sock gets washed again, it reconstitutes into slime. This stuff is tough-tough-tough!
IT'S INDESTRUCTIBLE!!

So, of course I did what any person of slightly above average intelligence would do.
I tweeted for help. And got the following suggestions:

Salt.
Alcohol.
Burn them.
Throw socks in garbage.
Get new socks.

And the lovely @BloggerTalk sent some enlightening slug info.

But needless to say....

...the alcohol was the only thing that really helped.

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Hang ELEVEN.

WARNING: There's a nude male surfer in this post.

This one is for The Mom-O-Matic cuz she's a naughty girl really swell. Plus I kinda promised I'd feature a hunky surfer with a Cornwall TAN.

Don't know what "hang eleven" means? Don't be lazy; google it. And then post the answer as a comment, heheheh.... *evil grin*.

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My Cornwall TAN.

There are some beautiful beaches in England. However, when frolicking in the surf off the Cornish coast you should really wear a wet suit. Because it's bloody freezing.

(Only 15 year old girls opt for bikinis instead of wetsuits. They are seemingly immune to the cold, though they do look a bit strange once they've turned blue.)

If the wet suit fits you properly, others should be able to tell what you've had for lunch just by looking. Since it's so snug, it will insulate you against the cold like a neoprene forcefield!

Your face, hands and feet get nice and brown. The rest of you is white, white WHITE! 
I call this the Cornwall TAN.

You see all the great looking surfer dudes, with their tanned faces, hands and feet. But believe me, under that slick wetsuit they are so pale, they are practically see-through. 

How do I know this? 
You're just gonna hafta take my word for it.

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The Dream WEEVER.

As you know, my first surf lesson ended in excruciating pain when I stepped on The DREADED Weever Fish. As those three little spines pierced the tender flesh where my toes join my foot, I could almost feel the weever fish VENOM injecting itself into my bloodstream.

Time passed, I had a few more lessons with the young/tan/fit/smiley dudes at Shore Surf, and I thought nothing more about it  But that venom was up to no good inside me. I began to have a series of bizarre dreams...

...prolly just the weever fish DNA fusing with mine, right? In my dreams, ha ha ha!

Well, imagine my surprise when I woke up this morning with VENOM-induced SUPER POWERS!!!

Don't laugh. It happened to Peter Parker, didn't it?

I still haven't figured out what those Super-Powers are, but I do have a strange urge to head to the beach, fling myself under peoples' feet and shout loudly:

Any suggestions for what my Super-Hero name should be? Will I be Hero or Villain? And how will my Powers manifest?!? Most importantly, what kind of Super Suit should I get?

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The DREADED Weever Fish.

I bet you're all wondering how my first day of surfing lessons went.

I went with two of my kids - the 10 year old boy and the 13 year old girl. The husband came along to take photos and no, I won't post those here unless you get me really drunk. Anyhow we got there early, donned our full body wet suits and yellow "first time surfer" rash vests, and followed the Shore Surf School gang down to the beach at Godrevy, Cornwall. Everyone had to carry their own boards down, and that is why one of my arms is now longer than the other. Hurrah!

First part of the lesson went really well. We did "prone surfing" where you leap onto your board like a mermaid and lie there riding the wave in. Although much bigger than a boogie board, it was pretty easy to handle and I was having fun.

And then....I stepped on something sharp.

I could feel three tiny needles going into the soft flesh where my toes join my foot. And I thought, "could this be the dreaded weever fish?" It didn't actually hurt much more than a stinging nettle, so I ignored it and caught another wave.

And then it started to sting and and I couldn't even stand on it anymore. "Uh...Mr. Surf Coach dude? Hey, Mr. Surf Coach? Um, excuse me hello Surfie Coachie? Pardon me yoo hoo? HEY MAN I STEPPED ON THE DREADED WEEVER FISH!!!" That got his attention.

I sat down with the very young, very blond, very fit, very tan dudes with "Surf Coach" on their t-shirts and we all looked at my foot. There were three puncture holes and one was even bleeding. It hurt more and more, but I was very brave and didn't cry. Yet.

By now I'll bet you're wondering, ok JC, what the heck is a WEEVER FISH?!?

It's this teeny weeny fishie that likes to lurk under the sand in shallow waters, especially at low tides. The Echiichthys vipera has three spines on its back fin, and if you step on it, the spines inject VENOM into your foot!! How exciting is that, right? Apparently it's the nastiest thing the UK has to offer. Grown men sailors fling themselves in the ocean and drown rather than suffer the excruciating pain of the DREADED Weever Fish.

First aid: kinda lame actually. When you can't stand the pain anymore, you must hobble off unaccompanied down the long, long beach, scramble over a bunch of barnacle covered rocks slippery with seaweed and climb up a steep cliff to the dunes. There's a Life Guard up there and he will put your foot into a tub of boiling hot water. Very hot water will neutralize the protein in the venom by cooking it.

Folks, I don't mind telling you that halfway up those rocks, tears were streaming down my cheeks. This was almost as painful as childbirth. But after 20 minutes of soaking my foot in the Life Guard's tub of hot water the stinging began to subside and I was able to walk again.

On my way back over the rocks, I noticed a little girl about 3 years old, crying her eyes out - she was stuck in the rocks and the tide was coming in. Because she was inbetween the rocks, no one could see her and the waves were so noisy, no one could hear her. The poor thing was really frightened! So I plucked her out and carried her through the deep water to her mom (who was quite some distance away, believe it or not).

So, if I hadn't been stung by the DREADED Weever Fish, who knows what fate may have befallen that poor little girl.

Going back for my second surf lesson tomorrow!

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The BUCKET.

I was tweeting this story when one of my clever followers suggested I blog it. So once again, it's Twitter storytime with Little Animation. Drawings only; I know, I know, you wanna see it move. But I'm on vacation here in the UK people! Stop whining.

So there we are at this beach at Marazion, staring directly out at St. Michael's Mount.

And we're looking for a nice little spot, sheltered from the wind, to set up this little portable bbq that my MIL has. Everything is covered in stinkie seaweed as the tide has just started going out. Bleah.

Finally we find a spot right next to the high stone wall at the top of the beach. Nice right? Wrong! It's full of litter!!

So rather than just stare at all the litter and get more and more upset, I decide to start picking it up. So I'm picking up the litter on the beach and putting it in this tin bucket intended to carry home the hot bbq coals.

Meanwhile my husband is building the bbq and stuff. And the kids and my MIL all helped me pick up the litter on the beach. Anyways, you would not believe it, but we filled that bucket right up to OVERFLOWING with beach garbage.

The kind of garbage we picked up from the beach included a paintbrush (used), several plastic bottles, twine, glass, styrofoam, bottle tops. So the tin bucket is overflowing with beach garbage and I'm thinking, wow, good thing we brought this bucket, it's come in handy. Right? Right! I use it to carry all the rubbish to the bins up behind the beach.

So my husband finishes cooking the food on the portable bbq on the beach, and we all eat the food and have a lovely time. And then...it's time to go, and we realize the lid to the tin bucket has been forgotten at home so we can't stifle the hot coals in it.

In short, there's no way to save the coals. But even knowing this, my husband dumps the coals into the tin bucket. And this is where it starts to get weird.

(At this point during my tweets no one had really indicated they were following the story so I asked: Are you listening? Quite a few were listening attentively as it turns out  Guess they learned not to INTERRUPT after the DEAD Rat Story)

Well any ways, it starts to get weird cuz of the bucket now being full of extremely HOT coals from the beach bbq and no lid to put on it. And we can't take that home can we? I mean, you can't put a metal bucket of hot coals in a car with three children and a MIL..

So I'm thinking....I wonder if we could douse it with sea water...?

But my husband says the salt water isn't good for the bucket. And I'm like WTF???

My MIL takes out her water bottle and offers to douse the HOT coals with her meagre quantity of H20. Which would have evaporated immediately.

So the hot coals are in the tin bucket, how to deal with them? And then I can see this evil twinkle in my husband's eye. And I know that evil twinkle. I've seen it before.

I could tell that my husband just wanted to piss in the bucket on those hot coals.

He was determined, okay? And there's no dissuading him when he gets that evil twinkle.

So he's trying to balance the bucket on this ledge in the wall so he can piss in it ONTO the hot coals from the bbq on the beach. And I said "if you piss in that bucket on those hot coals, I will hafta tweet about it."

Of course he ignored my tweet threat and went ahead and pissed in the bucket full of hot coals as it perched precariously on the ledge. Oh dear, what happened next was truly FOUL.

(Here it emerges that several of my male followers admit, nay, boast, that they would have done the same thing. Which is kinda interesting, you gotta admit.)

So away he goes, pissing in the bucket and the steam that came off those hot coals was VILE. And also? Strangely greenish.

Luckily the kids were off rock pooling somewhere and didn't bear witness to their father's antics.

So then would he rinse the bucket out? No, because the salt water is bad for the tin bucket. Folks, I married him and I do love him.

When we all piled into the car to drive back home with the bucket of piss soaked coals now cooling in the back the kids said...  "It smells like ...fish...no - ashes. No wait.....DAD DID YOU PEE IN THE BUCKET?!?"

My husband said he didn't mind one bit if I blogged this. He's pleased cuz he said it makes a better story. And I guess he was right. As he pointed out, no one wants to hear the one about the man who didn't piss in the bucket. Plus he insisted I depict his piss as a manly stream.

His eyes are still kinda bloodshot though.

What's the moral of the story?

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