Quiet times

Tuesday 28th April
True to form the weather has picked up now the school holidays are almost over, our UK visitors have gone and life under canvas has faded to a memory. I went for a run yesterday morning just as it was getting light and Balmoral Beach looked picture perfect, sand clean and smooth with gentle waves frothing away. There was a pelican floating along the shore line which was the picturesque last touch. When I got home and raved on about the beauties of nature etc. the drama queens suggested somewhat cynically that the pelican was a prop placed there by our local council.

We had the most blissfully indulgent weekend of doing very little which is very good for the soul and sanity on an occasional basis. Having been full on for the last month or so we decided to axe all household chores or indeed any kind of chore that felt like a duty. Simon cut the grass and I raked up some leaves but aside from that we all lay around, the drama queens immersed themselves in electronic stupors and Simon and I read the papers.

We had an impromptu dinner with great friends on Friday night where they cooked a fantastic barramundi dish. My contribution was a baked pear dessert. It wasn’t quite a flop; that would be far too mushy a word for the bullet like consistency that the pears retained even after nearly an hour in the oven. Gamely, we all tried to stick our forks and teeth into the now renamed 'pear surprise', but had to admit defeat.

One of our camping buddies had a birthday party on Saturday night to which we gaily trotted and even more gaily trotted home, or rather more accurately wandered home through the empty streets at 1.30am feeling very out there and proud of ourselves as the last of the over 40’s swingers. It is a sad fact of life that midnight isn’t just a curfew for Cinderella these days.

Drama Queen no.1 has taken to haunting charity shops in search of ‘vintage’ clothing, and returned home at the weekend with a dog agility set that she had found and bargained the store down on. Hours were spent initially trying to teach Pluto how to run through tunnels, perform high jumps and wend his way in and out of stakes. Being an intelligent dog he put up with it for a bit and then retired to his bed to watch the drama queens and all their mates perform human agility races which kept them all happily occupied for an afternoon. The downside of the dog agility training regime is that Pluto was fed an entire box of liver treats to encourage him round the course and as a result has developed an eye watering, room clearing, flatulence problem.