Ekka As Usual

After the ride stopped and we were released, we continued around shedding money like dandruff. Laughing clowns, log flumes, dagwood dogs, etc, before we retired to see some animals.

As usual the chick patting and animal petting were popular, and we visited the cowsheds wondering if the daughters would start to ask awkward questions about the bullocks'.... addendums.

The weather began to close in a little as we broke for lunch (lunch! ha!) but we laughed in its face and went for round two of chicken and animal patting before leaving as darkness fell.

We went back via the food hall, where we were to pick up some strawberries and marshmallows, on a stick, innit, when we suddenly noticed Eloise's disappearance.

A dog-whistle soon brought her back though. Good that she knows how to come back when called.

Fairground Contraption

So it's Ekkatime again.

This year, we went along with some other folks, and the extra adults enabled us to visit Sideshow Alley and the worryingly gravity-defying machines of fear without merely looking.

Eloise, now tall enough to go on the little roller-coaster, was keen to do so, and I went on there with her.

It was only a tiddler, and pretty lame by comparision with some of the other catapults of doom, so I was pretty confident.

But it must be ten years since I went on my last one (I can't even remember it) so when the inevitable chasm of freefall opened beneath us, yes, I squealed like a baby along with the others in our little spinny tea-pot.

Sam, one of our companions, was determined that we should sample the joys of one of the Mangonels of Mirth and we reluctantly acceded. She chose one for us which was like a counterweighted industrial catapult with a centrifugal pin wheel on one end which in turn had three arms upon which were mounted the seats of torture.

As we were strapped into our seats Nicole and I looked at one another as if to say -well, this is a bad idea, but it's too late to turn back now... and as the motors kicked in and we started moving I began to express my predicament colourfully.

I remember a moment when we were hanging upside down fifty metres up in the air, looking up/down at the carpark with the tiny figures beneath us, and experiencing a moment of clarity where any doubts about the mechanical integrity of this ludicrous machine that we had actually parted with money to be strapped to disappeared and the only sensible thing to do was to just enjoy it. Or endure it.

And as the wind started and my cheeks were pulled back past my ears and my legs clung on for dear life and my arms decided they should really be somewhere else and the carpark approached mercilessly and inexorably I just groaned.

I, Mac

Grandma Shirley and Grandad Brendan sent Eloise a nice mac.

Eloise wore it to school. I told her she needed to take it off while she was in class. I have it on good authority that as soon as my back was turned, it went back on.

We went to yoga. We had things to do so we left her there. I told her she shouldn't do yoga in it. I have it on good authority that as soon as our backs were turned it went straight back on again.

So, all in all, a success.

Air

And then it was time for us to go home, and escape Sydney's freezing climes to the subtropical comfort blanket of sunny Queensland, school and normality.

Eloise finished off her ant-ear-popping sweets before we took off, but to be honest I don't think aeroplanes pop your ears the way they used to.

Acrobatics

I awoke with a blistering headache, the kind you get from inhaling paint and varnish fumes and lack of coffee.

I sought to alleviate these symptoms at root cause by removing myself from the house and its attendant miasmas and heading down to the coffee shop, which I hoped would be at the bottom of the street.

There was also the small issue that I had no idea how to work the coffee machine.

The walk and coffee probably would have helped, and did a bit, but I thought it prudent to topup with a painkiller, and eventually this sorted things out.

In the meantime there was fun to be had by children, and who are we to stand in the way of that, so we headed off to the playground where Jarrah got on his scooter and repeatedly won "The Piston Cup," regardless of his actual position in any race.

Eloise combated his scooter advantage by outdoing him at climbing.