Let's stand for the anthem - and hear it for Patricia the best Stripper in town!

I know I am not going to get much sympathy from UK dwellers who seem be existing in a frozen wasteland, but the weather in Sydney over the last few days has been frightful.  The official weather forecast has been for ‘showers’ but all I can say is the people who categorise these things obviously have a very different idea to me on what constitutes a shower –  unless they mean the type of total saturation achieved by standing fully clothed under the jets of a power shower, because to be honest that was the type of rain cascading down on Sydney for most of the week rather than namby pamby type April Showers.

My mood was not improved by the disappearance of my wellies, which are not really normal garb in Sydney.  I have searched all the obvious places, the spare room immediately came to mind as everything else seems to have found a permanent home there, and having drawn a blank there though I did discover a useful stash of hockey sticks, I came to the conclusion that Husband for some reason best known to himself had put my wellies in the poolside swimming box, along with the goggles and flippers – there is I suppose a common rubbery theme.  Given it was tipping down (again) I didn’t feel like a dash to rummage around in the box, let alone the next task which would have been to insert my hands down the boots to check for spiders – have always felt this is a sure fire way to get bitten by something nasty but have been unable to come up with a better way to get round the wellie equivalent of a U bend.

Husband and Drama Queen No.1 are in fact in the UK at the moment and in the only photo I have seen to date, DQ1 resembles nothing so much as Simpkin the cat in The Tailor of Gloucester, peering crossly through the cold.  She claims not to have taken her thermals off since she arrived a week ago. So perhaps instead of moaning about the rain I should be counting my blessings that I live in a climate where thermals and wellies get put in a metaphorical “not required on voyage’ category.

I was discussing Desert Island Discs this morning and in the midst of the deeply intellectual chat, it came up that various mothers in the 60’s/70’s used to stick on very loud music and do the vacuuming with the room, if not the whole house, vibrating to Tannhauser or Rod Stewart, depending on whose mother we are talking about (Note to self, both mothers in question were Kiwis – maybe this is a strange NZ habit?).  Inspired I decided everyone needs a shout out loud anthem in their life, particularly on wet, cold days – and came home and put on Chris De Burgh’s ‘Patricia the Stripper’ full blast and pranced round the house, hips gyrating, and as ever the case with music, was transported back to my first term university, where with mullets to match Chris De Burgh, my new then, but still today, best friends, roared out the chorus. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOys46oZZJI gives you the general idea of the thing.

Instant lift, with the slight proviso that these type of antics probably best done in private and note, I did not pick up the vacuum cleaner, but there was a bit of high end breakfast debris clearance and dishwasher loading done in time to the "Swing of her hips" lyric.  But I have to say, Reader it worked.  The sun came out and the rest of the day has been glorious.  So pick your anthem, download it, crank up the volume, dance round the house and transform the day.