Oh holy sweet Jesus, I remember this as if it were yesterday.
Tuesday afternoons are spent watching Woogettes whack balls into tennis nets. This has been going on for years. Each Tuesday afternoon I look up at the sky and pray for rain. Which is a bit stupid in retrospective as if we were not at Tennis they would just be following me around the house saying that they were bored. So we go to tennis.
Tennis is taken very seriously at the program they attend. The coaches wear a uniform and discuss things like "split steps", which Mr Woog explained to me but it is hard for me to put into words here. But I think it is safe to say if I did one I would be on crutches. For a while.
The one good thing about Tennis is that there is an excellent club house that serves mixed lollies. Good, proper mixed lollies. $1 a bag. I always take great delight in making my purchase telling the lady that they are a bribe for the boys. Yeah right. For the boys......
Yesterday I was at tennis sitting on the steps watching thwack thwack thwack and sneaking the mixed lollies from my handbag into my mouth so the kids do not see me and scream out "Mum can I have a lolly too?" Most of the other mums sit up in the club house with their labradoodles and puffy vests talking about their mortgages. None of them eat mixed lollies so sometimes I join them later for a grown up latte.
Yesterday, after eating the lollies, I fancied a coffee so I went into the clubhouse and ordered one and picked up a bottle of water at the same time. I walked back through the verandah and said hi to a few of the tennis mums, making small talk, all the while the coffee was burning the fuck out of my hand. I excused myself and made my way over to the courts. And that is when it happened.
Out of no-where a huge gust of wind bore down on me like it was nobodies business. As it was quite a hot, blustery day, I had decided to wear a maxidress which was quite voluminous. The wind whipped the hem of that maxidress up and over my body until it floated and flew about a metre over my head. Like a Pheonix. I stood there is a confusion of fabric and panic and did the one thing I perhaps should not have done.
I screamed and screamed and screamed.
I screamed because I was holding a bottle of water in one hand and a motherfucking scalding coffee in the other, which was dripping and splashing all over me. Had I been thinking clearer, I would not have held both beverages up in the air but I would have chucked them aside and saved my dignity. My hysterical screams alerted the tennis coaches, kids and mums sipping lattes to stop what they were doing and make sure they all got a fantastic look at me in my reg grundies.
Harry in particular looked like he wanted to die.
I battled the dress until it came back under control. I took my water and my half coffee to the car and sat there, mortified, until the lesson was over. Next week is the last week of tennis and I will be wearing bike pants, leggings, jeans and tracksuit pants. And a scuba suit.
