Episode 9 Testicles and other compliments

My cousin Mary is deceptive, and I admire her greatly for it. I don't mean deceitful, or malicious, or capricious in any way, but rather that beneath her slender frame and pretty features lives a woman with a constitution.

Cousin Mary met her husband, Alun (a former member of Parliament and lifelong socialist), hiking the wilder parts of England and Europe. I made the mistake of thinking that Alun's outdoor pursuits in temperate climes would render him suitable for a brief exploration of the Australian rainforest on Mount Tamborine, only to discover that he found the experience most discomforting. Perhaps it was because his native Welsh countryside has deadly weather and benign animals, whereas the polar opposite can be said of the Australian bush. Having lived in Queensland for nearly two decades, I can attest to the pride exhibited by the locals that they even have a venomous tree that can deliver a deadly sting. I find this a curiosity worthy of mention to most visitors, which is one reason, among many, why I should never be entrusted with the job of promoting tourism here. Under my expert guidance, Alun's intimate crawl through a short section of rainforest might have soured somewhat at the prospect of being accosted by all manner of flesh-eating ants, ticks, spiders and snakes. The man-eating crocodiles, I assured him as we rejoined the open path, lived further up the coast, and the ravenous sharks, with gapes capable of ingesting beach volleyball teams whole, didn't swim this far up the creeks.

So, it was not entirely unexpected that Alun declined my offer to take him sailing on Moreton Bay. Mary, however, jumped at the opportunity.

We enjoyed a lovely sail around Green Island, pottering along under blue skies under puffy white clouds at three to five knots and not been threatened by lethal flora or fauna at any point whatsoever.

Cousin Mary enjoyed it so much that she paid me one of her greatest compliments. "Thank you for making me not have to look at anyone's testicles," she said.

She was referring to an earlier sailing episode when my father took both of us, then in our tender years, out for a row on his dingy. These were the days when elastic lost its elasticity long before the undergarments into which it was sewn were discarded, rather like my father's intimate peculiars. Having such a small boat, he had rightly distributed the weight with himself, being the heaviest, on the central seat, facing backwards, me on the foredeck and Mary delicately positioned on the rear between his bare knees as he set to with the oars. The motion of the boat, combined with the inadequacy of my father's ancient shorts, produced a quite undesired revelation to Cousin Mary, to which he remained innocently oblivious and I powerless. Call it a character-building event, if you will, but Cousin Mary gamely fixed her eyes on the horizon and insisted on smiling throughout, only confessing her hidden anguish after the application of much wine later that day.

A long time has passed since, but it must have been the last shared experience of sailing that we had had prior to our trip around Green Island. Like a crusty cheese or a cobwebbed bottle of wine that had been sitting, half-forgotten, in the cellar for many, many years, she had retrieved this treasured old memory to compliment me.

I raise a glass to Cousin Mary, and wish her and properly elasticated underwear everywhere, a long, happy and secure future.