Any Two Five Eleveniss?

The tennis racquet got an outing on Sunday even if the sewing machine didn't; There was an enforced bedroom-tidy followed by a visit from Hannah. Tennis stuff was taken to the nearest available court - I mean, car park, and balls batted backwards and forwards.

Lyra and I went to see how they were getting on after a while and we went swinging in the tree.

Afterwards Eloise and Hannah buggered off round hers to watch some flick or other and Lyra and I made ourselves busy, she watching the Octonauts ad bleeding nauseam, me fiddling with belly button fluff or something or nothing. Or housework. Or not. Who knows? I don't remember.

Just You and Me, Kiddos

Nicole naffed off on Saturday morning to Perth for a Nerdy Nursey Cosy Conflab, leaving me with the girls to look after. Bollocks! Til Tuesday! Double Bollocks!!

We went to the market where Lyra did her usual thing of running completely rampant under only cursory supervision. This time she actually made it into Unwaxed Mark's driving area, much to everybody's consternation. At least she didn't steal any mobile phones this time. Or money.

Eloise did well for herself: Pele the Ham Man had a tennis racquet for her, she having vaguely expressed some sort of interest a few weeks ago in the earshot of some other kindly punter who not-quite-anonymously donated the bat.

And, in a very nice surprise, Bonita the Bespoke Dress Lady, who is moving to Thailand to pursue her dress-making business from a more tropical clime, found a sewing machine for Eloise to pursue her own dress-making ambitions with. Which is a rather fantastic result, I am sure you will agree, without actually expressing it in any way whatsoever.

Eloise has written her thank-you notes. This Saturday we'll see if she's a Completer-Finisher.

Lack of Actual Rain Need Not Be An Impediment

After a day of science-based funterntainment we returned to retrieve Eloise from school.

Lyra deployed the brolly, for a while, disregarding the absence of actual rain in her attempts to pointlessly hamper progress.

And then Eloise took herself off for a play with a friend, rendering the whole misadventure utterly pointless.

Rainy Day = Indoor Play

It's winter, brrr! Temperatures have plummeted down to the low twenties, sometimes even down into the high teens. The mercury has fallen and the wind is coming from the sea. Showers drift across the landscape, unpredictable and mostly ineffective, but every now and then there's a semi-protracted drenching.

Not the weather for outdoor fun times, not by any means, and so off to the local indoor play-centre for an indoor play.

Lyra went solo after declining a pre-play pee proposal, and while I nurtured my fortifying cup of joe she went off to do her thing. A few minutes later a Mum came back with her, crotch-dampened and embarrassed. Off to the toilet again, then, and a follow-up release of excitement. You just never know.

A little later my Good Samaritan Mum had egg on her face as her daughter, much to my po-faced amusement, belted Lyra in the face, clearly attempting some sort of egg-sucking educational experience which Lyra mysteriously failed to appreciate.

While I was languishing in the ball pit pondering my lot in life, the little treasure took herself off to the Inflatable Slide of Inevitable Doom. I caught up with her as she looked down - with feelings akin to a learner looking down her first black run, I imagine.

Represent.

Books Books Books Books Books

Long weekend - Queen's Birthday. Bless her. How old is she? God knows. Her telemeres still seem OK though. I bet she doesn't get back pain. Although how would you know?

Anyway. In what might be a first we actually caught a train into the city to go to the book festival. We end up doing these sorts of things when I'm the one having the ideas, although Eloise was very keen as books are right up her alley at the moment.

The train was easy squeezy and cheap and clean! Probably even cheaper than driving and parking down on South Bank and the train went straight there. And trains with children, how could that not be fun? Oh... when one of the children can't sit still and climbs over everything and runs up and down the carriage and molests fellow travelers, that's how.

The Book Festival was fun, in a sort of poring over endless, and I mean endless, rows of books, kind of way. We bought lots of books. Lots. Of. Books. Bagsful. Bagfuls?

I put my back out lifting them into the car.

History Alive

I don't think I really want to go over the whole event-filled day blow-by-blow because there were many blows and many events.

Suffice it to say that we attended, as a family, this History Alive festival thingy down at Fort Lytton, an old sea-defence station, now disused and turned National Park. Not really knowing what to expect, we parked at the designated remote location and caught a shuttle bus that was just like the single-decker buses I used to ride to school those many many moons ago. Eloise was very keen on photographing this historical artifact. The bus, that is.

When we got there we were greeted with the vista of a field of tents from a plectrum of the eras of European history from the Vikings to Medieval Saxons to Florentines to the World Wars. We ate sandwiches while costumed... individuals... wandered around exchanging geeky historical tidbits with one another, slightly bemused as jeeps swept by with American GIs hanging off the back, rifles cradled casually, and Victorian ladies promenaded past on unlikely-looking contraptions of dubious provenance. All, strangely, or not, with Australian accents.

Eloise tried on some armour, as you can see. She climbed on a Penny Farthing, played on a Celtic Harp, tried her hand at weaving on a loom invented by the Vikings, sampled some Medieval Herbs (the cooking variety).

Lyra did her usual trick of interpreting every roped-off section as an invitation. I had to retrieve her from the museum when she broke into a display and tried to get on a genuine WW2 motorbike.

The sun was hot for an Autumn day and we tried to stick to the shade as much as we could but there was precious little to be had, so we headed off up to the actual fort and diddled around there. After a while some people started shooting guns, with big bangs! That was exciting, grown men in pith helmets showing off their weaponry.

We rounded off the day by sitting next to some 64-pound cannons as they shot blanks across the Brisbane River. Those bangs put the previous bangs into perspective. Although the men who let off the cannons also wore pith helmets. Clearly men who wear pith helmets enjoy a bang or two.

Then a short tour around a home-made Portuguese Caravel! What could be funnerer?!

At the Library

I'd like to return my child please. Sorry, renew, I mean.

The Child Saw a Book

...and the book looked good.

On Her Trolley

The scenario here is that Lyra does not wish to use the legs that Nature gave her to convey her around the shop, and I do not wish to carry her as my neck is giving me effing gip and frankly I'm over it, and have you tried carrying a child and simultaneously pushing a trolley? I doubt that. You probably have a child that doesn't mind bloody rising in one like a normal child does.

So Lyra furthermore does not wish to share cabin space in the trolley with actual shopping, and she does not wish to use the seat, probably because she doesn't want to look at me, who knows I wouldn't, but maybe just because she wants to see where she's going and whether there are any child-height bargains to be grabbed.

So the compromise that she comes up with, if you can call it a compromise, is that she will use the seat, but backwards, with her legs draped over the chromium seat-back and the blood-supply cut off, pins and needles spreading down her legs as we move from aisle to aisle.

International Student Exchange

One sunny Tuesday I found myself in the company of the surreally tall international student Alex. Marion has students stay with her to improve their English whilst staying with local families as they study English here at some mysterious school called Langports, which seems to be very popular. We know a few people who host students but none seem to do it as inclusively or as well as Marion does.

Anyway, Alex apparently wanted to see some bushy nature, and Marion asked me to act as a guide, which, with a slightly raised eyebrow I agreed to do.

It was a tight fit in our little car, what with Alex's considerable stature, and I thought that perhaps a nearby bush venue might be best but halfway to the general location of Northside Forestry I thought, bugger it, let's show off some rainforest, and so I drove us up to Mount Glorious for a hike through the figs and the ferns and the palms.

With the recent rain I thought it might be interesting to see what it was like and it was drier than I thought it might have been but still pleasantly moist with a few little creeks gurgling away as we made our way down to the waterfall at the bottom of the walk discussing what it was like to be a youth these days.

I remember being twenty, vaguely.

We also discussed the reasons why, when you're twenty, your memory might become a little vague.

It was a pleasant enough way to pass a few hours, and I do like to have a bit of a root around the dark crevices. Alex enjoyed taking pictures of mushrooms, inexplicably.