Horror of horrors, she failed to take the day off for her birthday this year, instead electing rather foolishly to leave the logistical preparation up to me. Normally we forget to take something critically important, and it seemed to me that this year's ill-conceived strategy would end up with more than just the usual omissions. Still I attempted bravely to constitute a comprehensive collection of cutlery, comestibles and, um.... crockery (plastic) along with the necessary implements and ingredient, alcohol and alternatively alliterative articles. What an effort!
There were a number of potential destinations we had in mind, but given Nicole wasn't to finish her work until four, we had limited time to travel and so we settled on a jaunt out to The D'Aguilar Mountains and a little dell in a valley with which we are acquainted by the name of Bellbird Grove.
The heavens were thinking about indulging in a spot of foreboding as we arrived and selected our bbq by the wide field of ball-playing beneath the gum-encrusted hills around, the colours dulled in the grey light. We neglected to remember from last time that the wood-fired ancient barbecues of charm and dignity were at the other end of the recreation area, but by the time we'd remembered that we'd forgotten to remember that, well: it was too late. We were committed. And we had packed sticks especially.
I did remember the oil, which I counted as a personal triumph, but this did not herald universal success. On my list had been a spatula, and I had looked at the spatula in the drawer of the kitchen, but apparently that was as far as I'd taken that as the spatula was nowhere to be found. Also it became apparent that I had failed to bring along any tea towels for Nicole to drape over her shoulder in order to look culinarily cool.
We played something resembling a ball game for a while but my daughters are frankly balls at ball games, much like their father. "Tiggy," or "Chase" if you prefer (a game that involves chasing, for the uninitiated) was out of the question for recuperational reasons. We indulged in some balancing, and some going to the toilet, and some messing around generally, but soon the wild birds - They Who Should Not Be Fed - began to arrive, scenting the aromas of the preparation of food by that Cuisiniere of Repute, my darling wife, on the occasion of her quarty-tree birthday.
There were certain elements present who will remain nameless who chose to disregard the do-not-feed signs and soon little parcels of food were appearing around the place in the hopes of enticing the kookaburras, magpies and miners down from their perches to eat from the hands of children, with some success.
We ate in the fading light, discovered that I'd forgotten some other critically important stuff (I don't remember what), ate the profiteroles that we'd had to go back home to get earlier, because I'd forgotten them, and as the rain gathered its wits we returned home to get the ankle-biter to bed in time for us to watch yesterday's Doctor Who on catch-up.
Which we singularly failed to do...
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