In Which Eloise Reprises Her Urban Climb Birthday Party Experience

As if it were possible to top the Pepe's Mexican Birthday Experience, for her tenth birthday Eloise chose, for her public party - her Official Celebration, if you will - to entertain a select gathering of her close friends to a rock-climbing experience the likes of which we have not seen since the last time we had a rock-climbing birthday experience, in 2012.

We found the Urban Climb experience much expanded, with towering cliff faces all around, and a rock-arch taking centre stage, all lowering over us in probably rather less than fifty shades of grey, studded with hand- and foot-holds and ropes and people.

Eloise wasn't as acrophilic as I remember her being last time, even with her musculature finely honed by swimming and dancing, but perhaps she just didn't place as much faith in my abilities as a belayer to keep her safe, or else (and perhaps understandably) her factual safety didn't resonate with her subconscious fear of being ten metres up in the air on a sheer rock face, unable to reach her next hand hold with her muscles complaining and her tired reach withdrawing.

Some of her little chums however were spidering up the climbs like rats up a drainpipe, a toute vitesse, particularly the newbies. Beginners' luck, I should think.

Anyway the time flitted by like a flighty fly, and before we knew it we had to go, sweaty and sticky and filled up with sugar. Another birthday bites the dust.

Apples and Pears

Lyra and Eloise both like to help out at the Market. Mark the Stanthorpe Apple Guy often has Eloise ladying the till, weighing up the punters' fruit and gazing vacantly into the distance while trying to do maths. Lyra's preference is to jump around in the back of his van, and to steal his money.

After the grocery part of the market is done and the consuming part begins, Eloise's preference is for Dairy Iced Chocolate and whatever sweet stuff she can lay her hands on, while Lyra goes for Eloise's Dairy Iced Chocolate and Michael's chinese dumplings. Nicole and I are still in our Cappucino and Shakshuka phase.

Science

A fun Friday frolic is to visit the Museum. We have a season pass for downstairs, the interactive "Sciencentre" (to quote an over-used cliché, do you see what they did there?) so we can toddle in there at a moment's notice and mess about with stuff.

They have a thingummy on at the moment about the human body which is a bit, I don't know... rubbish? It's full of titanic machines which seek semi-interactively to educate around the senses and organs and all that. The machines really don't need to be as big as they are, and some of them don't seem really to work any more. It's a bit 1970s.

There's an amusing game about reproduction: amusing because you have to race a computer sperm (gasp) into the vagina (gasp) by hammering away at buttons. Lyra likes it because there are buttons. I believe the subtleties of the educational experience elude her, and she remains uncorrupted by the rude words (strangely enough, there's no mention of willies).

Another amusing one is the guts machine where we marvel at the length of the human intestinal tract, as represented by a rope which we pull out of the backside of a picture of a bloke. The rope stretches five metres or so (from memory) and when you let it go it snakes its way back up the man-figures arse. Only thing is, what with the picture being flat and all, the hole where the rope comes out is where the todger out to be, and so it seems very much more like you're grasping his one-eyed trouser snake and extruding it across the room through the medium of the tug-of-war pull. Lyra remains uncorrupted by the subtleties of any connotations an adult such as I might make.

The other half of the Sciencentre [sic] is much more fun. Lyra runs around in there, rushing from one thing to the next, pressing buttons with no regard whatsoever to the effect they might have, poking stuff, taking balls out and hiding them in other exhibits, and generally developing her motor skills and curiosity (hopefully).

For instance, here she is playing 3-dimensional Connect 4, having creatively re-interpreted the rules to enable the winning strategy of removing all the balls and throwing them across the room, watching them bounce amusingly and poor old Dad chase them around, even more amusingly.

And here she is sampling the delights of the Centrifugal Chair of Extreme Disorientation, which I imagine has left many a passenger reeling with nausea, but she took it gently and looked on it more as a pilot-harness fastening trainer.

My favourite is the Polypropylene Gas-Giant-In-A-Glass-Globe, which when spun at the appropriate speed forms little weather systems and climatic bands which swirl and dance in a fascinating and vaguely trippy way. I could play with that ball for hours.

Trashy Novels

Today's reading is from the thrilling literary tome "Frozen - Book of the Film."

Sign of Things That Came

It all felt a little anticlimactic at the time, but Lyra and I went for a walk down by the brook yesterday and there was... well, carnage might be a strong word, but there were men with machinery removing trees from the collapsed railings of footbridges, every available solid vertical structure was bedecked with straggled grass, the lomandras looked like they had nearly been swept away.

Diverted

...by the telly.

Cyclone Marcia is Coming To Visit

We can't say we haven't been warned. They've been banging on for days now about how much rain we've been going to get as part of this low-pressure system that's been coming in from the Coral Sea for ages.

On Wednesday, was it, the low pressure system intensified in a cyclone which the powers-that-be named Marcia, apparently in some homage to the Partridge Family, or maybe not.

By Thursday, the storm was "powering" or "barrelling" towards the coast at Yeppoon and had intensified to a Category Five cyclone which is very exciting and as strong as you can get!

Coincidentally on Thursday the rain "they" had been banging on about for days was supposed to kick off; we were precautionary in our travels, expecting a deluge of 500mm. We met up with C&G down at South Bank and parked distantly for reasons that are slightly to un-simple for me to be bothered to type about or for you to be interested in, and I was slightly concerned that we would be caught out.

But the rain didn't arrive; just a few showers.

On Friday, the radio was telling us that Marcia was continuing to "relentlessly" "barrel" and "power" "remorselessly" towards the coast and that it would then continue down the coast.... towards us. The local radio went into Emergency Mode, which is always exciting, but the subtle tension and energy hovering behind the superficially calm announcers' was unmatched by the light rain and calm air outside.

The calm weather persisted all day, with the rain building up bit by bit. People were clearly expecting drama later in the day; and the rain continued to build up. We ended up picking H up from school along with E, with doubts in the air about evening traffic, but in the end no dramas; we went for a walk to the Brook and found its banks burst and the flow well spated, man.

And so, here were are, with the cyclone nearly upon us, right now, and the rain is getting heavier, but the air is still still. Oh, and it's not a cyclone anymore - it's "just" a tropical low, again.

I am making no predictions.

Floodway

Kedron Brook catches water from a wide area upstream, but still it's quite amazing to see just how much water can fall from the sky and collect in one channel, gallumphing its way towards the sea,

One Decade Down, God Knows How Many To Go

I had ever such a cunning and cruel wheeze planned for Eloise's birthday, basically because I'm an emotionally bankrupt control-freak bastard who just wants to make everyone else's life shitty in order to garner short-term gratuitous kicks at the expense of everyone I am supposed to hold dear.

But enough about me. Oh no, hang on, not enough about me.

I spent literally minutes (an unspecified number of) buying presents for young Eloise, Lego-this, Ice-that, Book-the-other, and what with that awemazing bike she got for Christmas, and us telling her that could double up for her birthday, considering its awemazingness, and that big pile of internationally-shipped parcels sitting on the table whispering "Open me, now, don't wait until my birthday," a sibilantly tempting siren-call to the weak-hearted, I thought some of my efforts might be highlighted if I hid the good presents and put the crap one on the pile.

So, expecting temporary disappointment at the opening of the clarinet-cleaning cloth, to be closely followed by delight at the opening of the magically produced Lego, my plot was hatched.

Eloise foiled it at the first step as she was completely delighted by the clarinet-cleaning cloth, which rather took the wind out of my sails.

Still all the books, dresses, crossbows, lego, etc, all went down very well.

We ate Mexican in the evening, where the remaining presents were opened. The only fly in the ointment was when I trapped Eloise's fingers in her electric window. But she'll live.

Eloise in Ballet-Related Personal Success

This thing came up at Eloise's dancing school for an audition for a place doing some performance, after a few weekend-day's worth of practice, at some prize-giving ceremony that has something to do with some big ballet organisation or something, and Eloise thought, when someone had some words with her about it, that there might be something to it, and maybe it would be some fun, so she'd give it a go.

An indication of the level of the seriousness with which she was taking it was that she went for a sleepover around a friend's house the night before, and needless to say didn't go to bed til, I don't know, probably around midnight.

An indication of the level of seriousness with which I was taking it was that I let her go to this friend's place for a sleepover.

An indication of the level of seriousness with which Nicole was taking it was that she went around and fetched Eloise from the friend's place at 7.30am to get her ready. Bear in mind, though: Nicole's a morning person.

The story goes on as follows: the audition was at 8.30am, and Nicole, having taken Eloise the not very considerable distance to the venue, was told that she wasn't permitted to attend, and so came home again.

Eloise had to negotiate the whole thing solo, something I'm not sure that I would have had the confidence to do at that age, making friends and doing what she needed to do, being where she was supposed to be, paying attention, and all that.

Nicole had to return later on, and reported that parents had to wait outside before being brought in to escort their child home if the child was unsuccessful - and there were a few tear-stained walks of shame, I am told - or else retire, head held high, as the successful child would be spending the rest of the day there learning and rehearsing.

Nicole came back, on her own.