Getting into the hammock was easy enough, although it was completely unlike the one we had when I was a child at Wynnum. My big brother Bill made that one, which was of the conventional flat hammock style with a piece of wood at each end and was hung between the mulberry and mango trees, and long grasses grew up around it making it a place to hide away from a big family – we always knew where to look when we couldn’t find Mum.
No, the hammock here at Charis’s house, where Chris and I are house-sitting, is a modern variation which takes into account that people may not have the appropriate trees or even a garden to swing the cat in; in fact it’s probably designed for a verandah, which, indeed, is where this one normally resides. However, yesterday I fancied to do some sun bathing to top up my tan so Chris and I moved the hammock to where there was a little dappled sunshine by the fence. Happy and dainty as a lamb I gambolled – or was it more of a lollop? – into the strange canoe-like hammock. The striped canvas either side of me rose like walls as my weight found the centre and, ironically, sheltered me from the sun; but I found that if I pushed my elbows out at right angles and spreadeagled my legs I could make the walls recede enough for the sun to shine on me whilst still affording some modesty from any interested party in the neighbourhood (not that that has ever been of paramount importance before). In truth, from the neighbours’ perspective I must have looked like a giant stripey cocoon suspended in a metal frame.
After ten minutes of baking in thirty-six degrees my head and shoulders emerged from the canvas oven and I had to consider how to get out. At first I tried swinging my knees over the side from the middle but, in spite of the close proximity of my bottom to the ground, my feet were a good deal higher and, after a bit of pushing, urging and flailing, I just sat there like a stranded witchetty grub. I was reminded of the time my sister Mary and I went canoeing with our nephew William at Gumdale Creek and I was on the hard plastic kayak raft thing whilst Mary had drawn the short straw and was in control of the blow-up canoe with the soft bottom and high sides, which made it mighty difficult to paddle… and even harder to get out of! (I seem to remember that at length we had to tip her out rather inelegantly from her jumping castle that had come to rest on the mud. We laughed so much. Happy memories… for some!) Actually, it didn’t seem so funny now that I had to extricate myself from the hammock.
The memory gave me an idea. You don’t get out of a boat from the side – do you? (Yes, I know I tried it once, got my foot stuck on the rowlocks and nearly did the splits! So embarrassing.) I wriggled my way up as far as I could to the end of the hammock and swung myself over the side. Success!
“How did you manage to get out of the hammock yesterday?” I asked Chris when I appeared triumphantly at the screen door.
“Oh, I had a little difficulty too. I think I just rolled out lengthwise over the side,” my husband confirmed his method was somewhat similar to my own.
There you have it, how to get out of one of those deep hammocks. And if you have found that helpful I have another bit of useful information, this time regarding hair cutting… Should you ever need to trim off a scraggly piece of hair from the end of your plait or pony tail do not open the kitchen drawer and pick up the first pair of scissors you come to – put on your glasses and find conventional scissors with two blades, not six!
