Daily prompt: Two for the price of one

Daily Prompt
Cut Off
When was the last time you felt really, truly lonely?

I’ve been far lonelier in a company than I’ve ever been when I’m alone.

What’s more I could probably give you a good psychological rundown on why this is so, if I felt like it. But I don’t. And this is one of the joys of blogging, to me: you, my virtual friends, my surrogate social life, allow me to be me without explanation: what you see is what you get, you accept it or you don’t, and this is very, very restful!

That’s all I have to say on the subject of today’s prompt, so I’m going to move on to yesterday’s, which didn’t get posted because my ISP took a sickie, or similar, and didn’t come back until just now. And it’s even sort of connected.

I’ve lived in my current hometown for 12 years now, and while I’m on chatting terms with those I meet regularly in the course of the day, I’m otherwise left blissfully alone, which doesn’t make me lonely at all, but on the contrary, indicates their willingness to accept my eccentricities without being judgemental. I love them for it, I love the town. Here it is.

Daily Prompt
Local Flavor
Write a piece about a typically “local” experience from where you come from as though it’s an entry in a travel guide.

If you’re looking for a holiday destination at the end of the line, where the road stops at the sea, no one passes through on the way to anywhere else and you make your own entertainment or die of boredom, then South West Rocks on the NSW mid north coast is the place for you.

The closest airports are over an hour away, the closest train station more than half an hour, and in neither case is any onward transport service available.

This may go some way to explaining why there is nothing even vaguely sophisticated within cooee: not a flicker of glitz to be seen, no cosmopolitan cachet like Bondi, no après-surf culture, and no celebrities or craft or organic macadamia nuts like Byron Bay. It’s not a commercial Mecca, either – no casinos or nightclubs or spas or theme parks like the Gold Coast, and if you manage to shop til you drop, then your retail stamina is seriously defective.

But despite its woeful lack of A-list facilities, South West Rocks is taken over by tourists for six weeks every summer, presumably those less committed to the crucial business of maintaining their image: sun seekers and anglers, bushmen in shorts, barefoot urbanites and gaggles of children with zinc cream on their noses, boogie boards roped to their ankles and double-scoop ice creams dribbling down their chests.

For most of them, the beaches are the main attraction.

But if you tire of sun, sand, salt, sea and surf, you might like to visit the old convict-built gaol a few kilometres away, on the headland at the far end of Main Beach…

…or Smoky Cape Lighthouse a few kilometres to the south, and a great place for whale-spotting.

There’s a pub in SWR, of course, and if you’re feeling like a night out, you can visit the local School of Arts – they do show surprisingly current movies. It’s best to slather yourself in insect repellent, though. The mozzies are fierce. And I have been there when they ran the reels out of order, but I suppose modern technology has deprived us of those memorable moments.

But don’t despair. Although the local movie-hire place has closed, the newsagent sells board games, playing cards and books, and the County Club runs crab races at least once every summer.

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