More adventures on the high sea...

The tide is still very low on the lagoon, exposing even more of the sandbank opposite the house. The children have been fascinated by this and after school, as it was such a beautiful sunny day, I agreed to take Anna and her little friend Georgie from across the road over in the boat to have a closer look.

As you can see from this photo, they rather enjoyed it. And so did I until I realised I couldn't get the motor started up again, and I didn't have a my phone with me and my husband is in Abu Dhabi. Fabulous. The girls were irritatingly unperturbed. Eventually a nice young man (who turned out to be one of our neighbours, age 13, called Simon and goes to the same school as George and Anna) came by in his kayak. He offered to help, attached the tinnie to his vessel with a rope and towed us to shore. Slightly embarrassing I admit, but all good fun. And the children have someone to talk to on the bus!

I spent most of the day helping out at the school canteen. In common with most Australian schools, the meals service is largely run by volunteers. It's open at morning recess (that's first play to you and me) and at lunch time, and sells an amazing array of freshly prepared HEALTHY food. At recess the children can get snacks ranging from tubs of rice, fresh fruit, frozen fruit, icecreams, sushi - just loads of stuff. And lunches are two hot choices a day (today a thai style hot noodle dish or a chicken strip roll with sweet chilli and sour cream) plus lots of wraps, paninis, sandwiches, salads and toasties. I enjoyed being involved and meeting a few other people (largely English!) and couldn't help making comparisons with the woeful state of school lunches at home.

The end of lunch duties gave just enough time for a girly chat in my garden with Maria, lapping up some sun, and putting the world to rights like only us women know how.....lovely.....

On the buses...

You will all be relieved to hear that we did successfully manage to drag ourselves out of bed this morning and make it to school on time - in fact I was back home again just after 8.30am. Today was also the day that the children used the bus for the first time - for the journey home.

I think on the whole it was fairly successful - if you ignore the panic attack I had waiting at the bus stop to meet them. The bus was soooooo much later than I had anticipated and the children had been told to text me to let me know they were on it and all was well. But they didn't. So I phoned and they didn't answer. And I waited. And waited. And waited. School buses came and went - including one that had St Lukes children on. No sign of them. Then I asked the driver of another bus when the 789 was coming, and he told me it didn't stop at our stop. And then, just when I thought I could stand it no longer and would have to start my emergency plan (whatever that was), the bus turned up. The children were nonchalant. Just wait till they are parents....

As you will have noticed, I took a few pictures of the local pelicans this morning on the sandbar opposite our house. They were quite a long way off, so it is difficult to give you a sense of the size of them, but they are enormous. When in flight they resemble a light aircraft, flying disconcertingly low over your house. They look like they have no business being in the air.

Much to my disappointment I didn't manage to meet up with Andrew for lunch. His flight was severely delayed and eventually he was put on a plane to go direct from Brisbane to Dubai, which was what he had wanted to do in the first place. This meant that I had a quiet day at home making the house all gleamy clean and lovely. It looks great and I have made a pact with myself not to go all psycho when the children mess it up. Watch this space.

And just to amuse myself, I have added George Clooney to my Skype list. I feel sure he is going to accept me onto his list and we will become great friends, before he realises that I am all he wants and that the reason he has never got hitched is that he has been waiting for a slightly flabby, housewife and mother to come along. What would he want with young starlets and models when he could have my scintillating stories of laundry, school runs and floor washing? I do wonder how many thousands of saddos add him to their list everyday. Of course, I am not one of those saddos.....no, really...I'm not....

Happy Birthday Andrew!

Andrew was 42. I like this time of year because he is briefly 4 whole years older than me. Being still under forty, I allow myself to feel particularly smug about this. We celebrated by trying out an Indian in Manly. It's quite difficult getting a good curry here - they seem to think that curry is synonymous with runny. Although they kind of rhyme (there is a word for that sort of rhyme but I can't remember what it is), we English prefer our curries with more meat than sauce I think, and not vice versa. However, it was all fine and the restaurant was clearly very popular. We will continue our search for the perfect Indian restaurant in Sydney and let you know when we have found it.

Actually, the search for such a dining experience will take on a new urgency now we know that Alex is planning to visit us around this time next year...

Of course the other thing we had to do on the 21st July was collect George's copy of the new Harry Potter. George is an avid reader and has been waiting impatiently for it to be published. He's very excited and I suspect will finish it in record time!



So today is the last day of the winter holidays, and we have survived the full three weeks. It seems like aeons ago that I last did the school run. I am desperate to properly clean the house (and have it stay clean and tidy for a couple of hours) and to hear myself think. I suspect that in the last 4 months I have spent more time with my children than I did in the previous 4 years....and on the whole it has been lovely. As it was a nice day today (19 degrees - that's more like it), I took the pair of them to the pitch and putt up the road. It was rather fun. George won, but I made my own day by getting a hole in one, not once but twice and the first one on the first hole! I'm usually utterly crap at that sort of thing.

I'm feeling a little bereft though - as Andrew went away yesterday and will not be back until next Saturday - Brisbane and Abu Dhabi. He will be passing through Sydney briefly tomorrow, so I will go to the airport and meet him for lunch, then he has a 14 hour flight to UAE. I never used to mind him going away when we were in the UK - it was a good opportunity to have full control of the TV remote and not to have to cook so much. But here, I feel very isolated when everywhere he goes is such a bloody long way away and I don't have the same support network. However, I'm sure that over time I will get used to it.

Right - I'm off to bed for an early night. I'm seriously concerned about my ability to get up at school run time after such a long time! I had the kids in bed by 7.30pm and should have gone off myself then......

You cannot be serious...

I forgot to mention yesterday that at supper we had a bit of a chat about everyone's personality. According to the children, Andrew is the funny one and I am the serious one. Hmmmm....I think that may come as a shock to some people....

PS It's Andrew's birthday tomorrow - don't forget to leave him a message!

Waves...

We went on a bike ride today, around the lagoon on the Pelican Path and down to Narrabeen Beach. It was another bright and breezy day, and the waves were big, but not good for surf. I know this because there were no surfers there - it was one of the very few days that I haven't seen a single board on the water. I believe that the expression for what the waves were doing was 'dumping' and this is not good for surfers.



It's difficult to really capture the majesty of the waves here, but wave watching is a popular pastime, and many times at Dee Why beach I have been able to see very clearly from where the inspiration for that wonderful Guinness advert came. The waves really do look like fabulous white horses.



There are surfers in the water virtually all the time. I don't know what these people do for work, but it seems to me that any day of the week, if the surf is up, they are there. I have heard it said that it's not a good idea to bring your children up on the Northern Beaches for this reason - they are likely to turn into beach bums. Oh well...



And here we have another in my occasional series on local birds! There are lots of these about, and they wait to get the scraps of your picnic. Don't know what they are though!

A Family Outing

We had a day out as a family in the National Park, as Andrew has this week off work. We made our way up the West Head Road stopping along the way at the Basin path to see some Aboriginal engravings in the rock there. We were all very keen to do this, particularly George, but in the event, they were a bit of a disappoinment. This was partially because they were carved into horizontal rather than vertical rock and were therefore quite difficult to see, but I think we were all expecting something a bit different. Not sure what though....it felt a bit like when Andrew and I visited the Picasso museum in Barcelona. We were all set to really like it and feeling good about being so cultured, but when it came down to it we realised that actually we are heathens, as we were rather bored and left after 45 mins. I'm ashamed to say that a similar thing happened at the Louvre, although this was largely because the 19th century art section was closed and that was what we particularly wanted to see, and partially because we got lost in the part of the (absolutely huge) museum which was just bits of Grecian pot. Yeah, I know...we are very low brow. We like America's Next Top Model for goodness sake. However, I digress....



The weather was clear and brisk, and this apparently is what we should expect from a Sydney winter. Clear skies and sun but not necessarily warm. It had been the coldest winter morning for 30 years, so we are still getting some unusual weather, but it was lovely when we were protected from the breeze and in the sunshine. The views from West Head looking across Pittwater back to Palm Beach and up the coast to Umina Beach were wonderful, and we then went down the steep path to the West Head beach, where Anna was brave enough to have a paddle.







We are so looking forward to when the weather warms up - we are still very cold in the house in the mornings and the evenings, and we now realise that this is to an extent to do with this particular house - most of the other houses we go into are not so cold, so this is something we will be careful about when we get our rental property next year. I've also learnt from this house to never have a black granite worktop! All useful stuff...

Fun on the water (not for the faint hearted...)

Well it's been a busy couple of days.

Andrew took George and his friend Jack out for the inaugural trip on the boat. I didn't go as I've had some weird virus type thing that was making me lose my balance (or at least I'm presuming that is what it is, and not a brain tumour or something...). Anyway, after they left I snuggled up on the sofa and must have fallen asleep.

You can imagine my concern when I woke up some hours later to find it pitch dark and with our happy sailors not returned. I went outside and surveyed the darkened lagoon. No sign of them. I tried Andrew's mobile - switched off. Just as I was wondering who you phone when your husband, son and his friend have disappeared in the dark on the lagoon, the boys came in the front door.

It seems that they had run out of petrol in the middle (won't be taking the boat out again without the petrol can methinks). They had had to row to the shore with the one paddle that was in the boat (I had pointed out previously that if there was a problem, just one paddle might not be all that helpful...), then walk around the lagoon to home to get the petrol.

However, they were all in high spirits and appeared to have thoroughly enjoyed their adventure!

On Sunday we had friends Paul and Lydia and their children Jack and Will over. There were several uneventful trips out in the boat and lots of fishing from the back garden. Paul caught a beautiful bream which is shown above (minus head and guts). I cannot tell you the tale of this fish's demise at Paul's hands for fear of reprisals from the Animal Liberation Front, but suffice to say that I did not eat it in protest. The others tell me it was delicious.

And I meant to say - have I told you that we have an orange tree, a lemon tree and a mandarin tree in the garden? I can't tell you how lovely it is to start the day with an orange you picked yourself...