Saturday Afternoon at the Playground

I'm not quite sure why we would do such a thing, but Eloise on this Saturday afternoon steered us in the direction of Frew Park, which we have sampled as part of the Playground Census but Eloise had only briefly sampled while Nicole was having her allergies assessed.

The Slide of Doom was once again in operation and we scaled its dizzy heights before ejaculating ourselves from its curly tube. The Silly Stick game was banged away at, and the swings were swung.

Storming Up Nicely

This one missed us by a mile, as they seem to, but in the distance, lots of lightning.

Pat to the Rafters

The ongoing search for the perfect playground continues, taking us this time Southside again to the Pat Rafter Tennis Emporium, opposite which is a modern well-appointed playground built on the site of an old power station and so themed, like that makes any difference to toddlers whatsoever, on power, electricity, and even more thrillingly, the architecture of the local electricity supply infrastructure.

Parking is abominable (in terms of its availability rather than practitioner skills, I hasten to clarify) and a walk is required through a modern precinct of well-defined design lines and clearly delineated activity zones - cars go here, people go here - with features such as an apparently pointless and yet strangely pleasing step-based amphitheatre dedicated to an old tennis player whose name currently escapes me but which offered plenty of opportunity for innuendo.

The playground is pretty good as it happens, offering plenty of shade on this sun-soaked day and we spend some happy hours with Lyra and Georgia actually playing together companionably which makes a nice change. There are all the things you would expect of a playground, with the addition of a large cubist climbing frame and a strange thing which defies easy description but involves a freely-moving plastic ramp which, when a toddler is attempting to climb, can be violently agitated from beneath by an irresponsibly adult with predictably hilarious if mildly dangerous results.

There are plenty of different things to do until Georgia urinates voluminably and ostentatiously in a sand-related piece of playground equipment. I am the Good Samaritan who uses a discarded coffee cup to bail the puddle to a less offensive elsewhere before it becomes necessary, in view of the mysteriously besocked onlookers, to call it an armpit and hoof it once more for the safety of the Northside.

Lyra the Photographer

First Bushwalk for Bloody Yonks

I went to Mount Coot-tha for the first time in ages and did the walk that goes down a bit then up, over and around before it comes down again and then around and along a bit then back.

Someone has been stone-balancing.

String Them Up

I would be the first to congratulate Eloise on her violin skills, if she practiced consistently and managed to move gracefully on from the Strangled Cat phase of bowing skill, but try as I might in my inimitably irascible way to encourage stroke discourage her to stroke from fingering properly, intoning correctly, and correcting the jittering bow, she is taking her sweet goddamn time in making the transition to being a sweet fiddler.

Thinking back, it probably took me many years, and I suppose I must thank my parents for their patience and indulgence, unable as I am to recall their exhibition of these qualities.

Eloise does play in an "Orchestra" by which we have previously been awestruck in their rendition of varying little-known ditties of dubious provenance. Frankly they were pretty dire, but time and plenty of early-morning practice have improved them immeasurable to the point where they have entered a competition.

And on this day, a Sunday no less, Eloise did don her music shirt, and she did pack her musical instrument, and we did journey South into the Badlands of the Southside to Calamvale, that most distant of distant suburbs, where on the way we did become lost and wander in the wilderness before finding said school which was to all intents a wilderness in its own right, titanic and sprawling with schools within schools. And we did eventually find ourselves, near a sausage sizzle, where more Wilston Parents did appear, and thence did the assembled students depart for to practice and we did stand around chatting while the time of our proud discomfortable viewing did approach.

And we filed into the Auditorium and the children did ascend onto the stage and we did watch mistily as they played their music. And it did please us.

They did all right in the end, though they were gutted to get only a silver award, but I thought it reasonable as the Judge delivered his fair assessment that they needed to work on their intonation (i.e. they couldn't really play in tune).

The Plastic Trophy was held aloft and we did hoof it away, a tout vitesse, back to the Sunny Northside, where the living is easy, the traffic light, and the women so much more comely.

Self-Adornment

Beauty in this case is apparently on the face of the beholder.

An End to Swimming for Eloise

I'm a bit of a sucker for a free lunch and, against all objective research evidence, adopt a utilitarian approach to after-school activities to the extent that I feel that they should be useful.

Having said that, Eloise has been whining for apparent aeons that she doesn't like swimming, that it's boring, that it's hard work, on and on and on.

I keep telling her how proud I am of her swimming, how she swims like a fish (in the sense that she swims well, rather than that she spends protracted periods of time underwater playfully and yet aimlessly adjusted her bouyancy through fine-tuned bladder control while opening and closing her mouth gormlessly), and how I get a free swim when she does her thing and it's pretty much my only avenue to fitness other than riding bikes, and taking long walks in the countryside and going to the pub with my friends.

I have finally relented however and allowed her to drop swimming, partially just to relieve my chronic earache, and partly to free up some time for her to do some homework as her other outside-school-activities, those being dancing in its many and varied forms, and so given it up she has.

Rescue Us From the Animals

One of Eloise's dancing chums invited her to her birthday party. It was located out at Brookfield, a distant Western semi-bush suburb at an Animal Rescue Farm type thing, so we all went along.

Another one of those damned sunny Queensland days; while Eloise attended her party and did her thing the rest of us wandered around shade-seeking, cavorting with the goats and the sheep and the horses.

Some pretty sad cases; it's a charity that takes in and looks after unwanted pets and animals that people could't cope with, but there must have been more to it than that because there was a poor horse, nervous as anything, a hole in its forehead from a gunshot wound, but happy to be stroked. Various farmyard beasts; goats. alpacas, sheep, a pig or two.

Even a camel who came out at the end for photos and ended up raiding the party table for crisps and cupcakes.

Lyra got into the goat enclosure by hook or by crook. Some social faux pas or other got her on the receiving end of a butt or two, which was a bit of a twist at the end of the day. But she was OK and shook it off, because, you know, she's a trooper.

Medieval Misanthropy

Let's be honest, the main attraction of the Abbey Museum's holiday funtimes is shooting arrows at Damien.

Nicole came this time - what, another day off?! - and was perhaps underwhelmed by the scale of things after the size and gravitas of the monumental festival some months ago. But I think she was won over by the homely unpretentious intimacy of the holiday stuff which is just good fun really. And the kids get to shoot arrows at Damien.

Eloise was chuffed to win a prize for being archer of the day. Cloud-shooting is her thing. That's artillery-style indirect fire for you ingénues.

Lyra had fun mixing paint where it wasn't supposed to be mixed. Nicole had fun dealing with the grown-up tosser who had a go at her about it.

I shot arrows too and hit the target a couple of times. I had a string burn on my forearm for a few days afterwards.