Tour Guides R Us

Last Friday - it seems like a long time ago - we dropped Eloise off at Nursery and had a mad dash around Mt Coot-tha with the mutts before setting off for the airport to pick up the old fella and Shirley.

We were a little late owing to the excellent new traffic lights at the airport whose purported safety function has the unfortunate side-effect off transforming even the mildest of traffic into grinding gridlock.

Oh, and we went to the wrong terminal section as I'd forgotten what airline they were flying on.

Anyway we found them without too much trouble and after dropping their caravan of baggage off at home, and conduting the tour of the house and grounds, went up to Mount Coot-tha for some lunch.

You'd think that they'd have changed what with us having been on the other side of the world for a year, but of course we've been video calling on a regular basis so we knew what they'd look like. It was probably nice for them to see us withouth the purple rinse that our webcam washes over us, but I shouldn't think they were too suprised either. I didn't get any comments on my golden bronze windsept outdoorsman complexion anyway.

Not for us the good old café though, it was made clear that we were to be treated at every opportunity, which was nice, and so we repaired to the mountain top restaurant to eat ourselves silly.

The aforementioned jacaranda trees got a good reception, your see I wasn't lying when I said they were very pretty, and they seemed to appreciate the general greenery of the exotic subtropical foliage and all that.

We picked up Eloise from nursery and the grandmotherly and grandfatherly cooing started in earnest, and presents were unwrapped to general acclaim and then early to bed as they'd had a long day.

A tentative itenerary had been discussed and we had various trips on the agenda. Day 1 was the city where we had an ambitious plan of walking up and down South Bank, going on CityCats and all that, and to be fair we accomplished a lot of it, but an en-masse excursion to the brook first thing ate into the time somewhat.

Still after Eloise had had her nap we set off into the city and parked down at the South Bank. I had a runny nose for a couple of days and unfortunately started feeling progressively iller and iller, and when called on to make decisions I was at best inconsistent.

So after the merest sniff of South Bank - no pagoda, no Branded Beach - we were on a Citycat and heading up river past the city and under the Story Bridge, and out past New Farm and back.

We stopped at Riverside and hopped off so we could walk across town, and my whole body had started to ache. I adopted that listless "I'm living partly in the spirit world and have chains around my ankles" walk and was half-talked into going home to my bed, where I was safely ensconced by six o'clock. I did not emerge for twenty four hours and then only briefly.