A brush with indecent exposure

After my deliberations about what to bring for this trip I finally settled on the answer - everything.

I packed for every eventuality I could think of. Pants, shorts (yes, I found some at Sussan, bless them), tops, t-shirts, shoes, new jammies, etc etc ...... and swimmers.

Yesterday I went for a swim in those swimmers, and a lovely pleasant time I had too, bobbing around in the pool trying desperately to cool down my core body temperature after the run I just finished which nearly caused me to overheat and expire on the running track. (Here, going for a 40 minute jog feels like oh, a 2-hour jog at home, due to the heat and humidity. Oops. I won't be doing that again without some water.)

After I felt my face diminish from beetroot red to a simple tomato, I got out of the pool and had a shower to wash the chlorine off. Peeling the swimmers off me, I suddenly noticed that my boy-leg pants were almost completely see-through in the rear.

Argh!

Now it's true that I haven't worn those swimmers in a while - I've been managing a shoulder injury and the physio has instructed me not to swim. So I haven't worn those swimmers since - say, about November - and just chucked them into my bag without thinking twice. Clearly over the intervening six months, the lycra has degraded to the point where they are now totally indecent.

Panic began to set in, because tomorrow I am going on a three-day induction camping trip (and incidentally I haven't camped since I was seven years old and got stuck up a dead tree in the middle of a lake and had to be rescued by two of my cousins) - and I will most definitely be needing swimmers of the non-see-through variety for that trip.

And here we are in Kununurra - what are the chances of being able to find boy-leg pants and a tank top - NOT halterneck - in Kununurra, when I can't even find them in Melbourne?? I was almost hyperventilating.

So during a break in our full-day seminar session yesterday, I whisked myself off into the town centre, which is tiny. I tried a shop or two. No luck. My hands began to shake. My mind began to race. No swimmers! I mean, yes, there were swimmers, but I am not a tiny-pant-and-boob- tube kind of swimmers person. I need coverage. I want no visible bikini line thanks very much. I am a boy leg and tank top (NOT halterneck) person. I think I've mentioned that already.

Rounding the corner of the shopping centre my eyes lit on a building, and it was as if the clouds in the heavens opened up and choirs of angels sang to me. Target! Oh my god, even better -- Target Country!

Ten minutes later, I was the proud owner of the perfect pair of swimmers. Turquoise green boy leg pants with a matching tank top - not halterneck. With built-in ahem, support, in the bust. For the grand total of $50. I couldn't have been happier if .... (well, here I was going to say if I'd won the lottery, but that would be exaggerating .....) if I tried.

I tested them out in the pool last night, under the stars, and they were perfect. Utterly perfect.

I think today I'm going to go back and buy exactly the same pair in black. You never know when you might need a second pair, right?

(PS, for a laugh, you should also know that I managed to pack a total of 28.6 kilograms of luggage .... and still managed to forget the special tropical strength insect repellent My One True Love specially bought for me and was therefore feasted upon by massive, monstrous tropical strength mosquitoes on the very first night here. I have since remedied that error.)