Hetheth enda

---

Thursday March 22nd

Had a very leisurely get-up and then pottered around Sydney all day. I'll spare you the details, but I bought some souvenirs for my housemates, saw this and that and just generally pottered. It was freezing cold, a chilly 21 degrees.

When I got back I suggested to Jim and Em that they go out for the evening together and take advantage of my presence here. They did just that, and Jack and Flossie must've detected something of the sort as they would not go to bed. We had lovely big prawns courtesy of Masterchef Australia (Jim's friend Andy worked on the programme) with chips. Nom nom nom.

At about 10pm Jack started crying and I went up to see what the problem was. He was scared of a monster, and I'm pretty sure from his descriptions that it was the very same monster I had planted in his head the day before. Oops. Bad uncle. I got into his bunk until he went back to sleep then snuck off downstairs.

Around half midnight he had another monster attack, and just a couple of minutes after I got back down stairs Jim and Em lumbered in, looking merry. It seems they had done their own pub crawl (ours was a meer warm-up by comparison) and we stayed up a little longer listening to music till, innevitably, Jimal conked out.

Friday March 23rd

No kids! (at pre-school) So on the recommendation of Ems the three of us went to Revolver cafe and had what I estimate to be the finest breakfast I've ever had. Cooked in a single pan - spinach, feta, beans (nice ones), squash of some kind with avocado, black olives, aubergine, a last-minute poached egg dropped in with some tasty bread and hummous.







After that we went out on a ferry to Manly Beach (grr... MANLY!). As usual with the ol' transport in Australia this meant we got about 1.5 hours on the beach before we had to go - Ems to meet a friend and Jimal and I to get the kids. I wasn't to bothered though as my stomach and chest were still burned to ribbons and did not appreciated the sun.

Took a while to get the kids back due to moaning and stopping all the time "I wa' limade" , but eventually we got back and got 'em fed.

Dinner = takeaway curry - yesiree!

Saturday March 24th

Last day (das war super-schnellungening as the Germans would say). We popped off to the fish market in Sydney for lunch. It's an amazing place but very busy. Ems showed great skills nabbing us a table to sit at - my attempts were comparatively pathetic! Grilled flounder - nom nom nom.

That evening, for the first time, I had Oysters. My only ever experience with them before was Mr. Bean in room 426, but gladly I wasn't horrifically ill and didn't spend the evening running naked around a hotel before jumping into the dressing-up box of a drag queen. Good thing too, because my sun-burn would have a been a real eye-sore around the hotel. Especially as it was by now peeling like a giant glue-covered flap-jack.

I played it cautiously, booking a 3am cab for a 6am flight. The driver scoffed "you could have had another hour in bed!" Quite right in the end, as the barriers didn't open till 4:30 and I arrived at 3:20. So if anything his scoff was an underestimation.

I watched the end of that film In Time with Justin Timberlake (it wasn't called Just In Time as I claimed on my first blog, I just Derren Browned myself into believing it was because it's funnier that way!), and drank about 16 complimentary 50 ml bottles of Whiskey, thinking it would help with the flight. But do you know what? Made it much worse.

I returned to London keen on the news that there was a "March heat wave." I'm sitting here writing this and do you know what? I'm freezing my arse off!!

Conclusion

So there we have it. Dingos, hats with corks, Kangaroos, hot weather, "a high ratio of fine totty" (to quote my uncle), late transport, deadly spiders, "s'truth, spunk, daggy, heaps, hipsters", touching the Queen on the arse, convicts, aboriginal genocide and Fosters. These are what make Australia great, God bless it!

---

Photos

Breakfast
I don't normally include photos on this thing, but this was too good to pass up!