Anyone who knows me knows about my Chelsea Moments of the Day. Chelsea Moments are anything that would not normally happen to anyone in life's normal context. Usually they are bizaare and invoke the reaction "How on earth did you manage that???" This is a (relatively) small compilation of my life's moments to date. It is still, as eternally, under construction.
Most recently, while attending a 21st last weekend, noticed a friend I hadn't seen in a long time. Keen (as always) to impress with my sparkling wit and dazzling personality, I made the move to sit next to this young man and proceed with some form of brilliant conversation. It didn't happen. Instead, my hamstring cramped up, I sat on the coffee table, and chips and dip went everywhere. The carpet needed scrubbing; the young man just got up and left. To top it all off, it was my favourite kind of dip.
Most famously, whilst riding into tech from the dear Sandringham flat early one Friday, I foolishly took to the very left of the very left lane. Too late, I saw the formidable shadow of a Stagecoach (née Yellow) Bus approaching from my right rear. By this time I had no choice but to be crushed into the sidewalk by one of my least favoured modes of transport. As a result, my bike was destroyed, but luckily, not I - escaping instead with a cast on my left arm and 224 painkillers for my trouble, and one heck of a story to tell my radio lecturer...
This followed the least well known of a long series of bus-related stories. The first involved myself bicycling very fast down Wakefield Street, seeing a (stationary) bus too late and running into the side of it. I came off the bike, mangling the handlebars, and left half my outer flesh on the road behind me. Luckily a very sweet pensioner came to my aid, bless his wee soul, and I was Dettol-ed up and given a lollipop by my sweet flatmates.
While in the midst of fateful adoration for the now infamous Tim Galea, I overenthusiastically offered to be linesman for his soccer game against Mahurangi College. Desperate to make an impression, I spent the entire game sprinting up and down the sidelines like a fanatic, even when it was completely unnecessary. Unfortunately my excessive speed combined with not being able to take my eyes off The Man Himself meant that I wasn't watching the Mahurangi coach, who took that moment to randomly flail his left arm. It connected forcefully and dramatically with my upper lip, which then swelled to epic proportions, earning me the nickname "The Elephant Man". Ironically, it was one of the few occasions Tim actually paid any attention to me.
The Tim-related stories are neverending. On another occasion, while travelling home on the school bus (buses seem to feature consistently in my Moments), I got into the aisle in preparation to get off at my stop. The bus driver then decided that I didn't actually exist (see Lawrence's "Women in Love", chapter one) and proceeded to ignore my stop, despite the door being open. Not being one to cause a fuss, I decided to disembark the bus while it was still moving. My non-scientific brain didn't register that when a vehicle is moving, the ground is effectively moving also. I hit the ground, cut my hands open, rolled, and looked back up at the bus in time to see Tim's laughing face at the window...
Continuing with the bicycle theme, I once rode mine to Eden Park in Auckland (in the days before it became a mangled wreck beneath the wheels of a bus) to watch the NZ v South Africa cricket test. I chained it up, as you do, to a tree and went and spent a lovely afternoon watching our Men in White. Upon returning to my bike and attempting to unchain it, I discovered that I had actually chained the helmet to the tree and left the bicycle completely unrestrained from thieving hands. Needless to say, nobody stole it. The helmet was probably worth more anyway...
While living in a student hostel during 1998, all meals were provided for (hey Xandria) so no cooking facilities were available on the floors. One night, we came to rectify this ourselves. Becks and I, after being lost in Mt Wellington (more about That Most Dreaded Of All Suburbs later) we missed dinner, so decided to kidnap the hostel toaster and have a tea-with-jam-and-toast fest on my floor. Little did we know that the hostel's smoke alarms are incredibly oversensitive, and before we knew it the hostel was being evacuated of 200 students in various states of undress (none of them happy) and a group of burly firemen looking for a scapegoat - me. My fine of $3000 was reduced to a mere $50 after some wailing and gnashing of teeth.
In other Mt Wellingon news, I once took a trip out there in the hope of getting my computer repaired by the lovely Edwin at MITAC. Mt Wellington, being three stages from the city, isn't frequented by buses all that often, so when I discovered I'd missed mine and the next one wasn't to come for another 90 minutes, I thought with some country-girl inspiration, "it'd be quicker to walk, wouldn't it?" But I didn't stop there - my logic stretched to figure it'd be even quicker to walk along the motorway! Inspired! So I began my trek. Halfway to Penrose I thought it was too weird that every second car was tooting at me - I wasn't looking that good. Upon reaching Penrose I thought "something just is not right about doing this" (I was informed later that it was illegal) so disappeared into the realms of Penrose, found someone I knew completely by coincidence, and was saved. God bless you Paul! Sorry I never called.
"Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, be it ever so humble, there's no place like home."
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-John Howard Payne
