29th January 2010 (Friday)

'Strodinarily hot. Frankly, we were glad to be indoors. It's hot. Wavelets laugh diamonds at the sand and all that but really, protein denatures past a certain temperature and I think that might have been nearly reached. I mean, it's hot. Seriously not cool. As one of Ian's old Caius mates who now lives in Queensland with his Mrs and 1.8 sprogs puts it, 'bastarding hot'. In short, our beach time was limited today and we were rather floppy inbetween. Plus, the Baths were closed today (it being Friday) for cleaning, and what with waves, what with heat, even the Littles agreed to go in by about 11 a.m.. She even agreed to 'take it easy' on the big bed with me a little later, for quite a decent while - I think that involved deep sleep for me and thumb sucking for her but I can't be sure because I wasn't there. She certainly didn't move. We took our time doing work and reading and all that, then she did her colouring in while I phoned round schools and tried to inveigle myself into a visit, one way or another. Varied success, we've got our first visit on Tuesday and we're waiting for call back from a couple of others, and some others we were merely invited to crash in and fill in an application form - no time for meetings. However, one step at a time.

Having said we didn't spend much time at the beach, the time we did was actually rather nice. We went into the old, disused pool that's next to the regular ones and isn't cleaned out, just open to the waves, and it's rather nice. Lots more stuff to rockpool round, seaweed galore, little fishes darting about, more stuff in the sand to collect and look at. Well into the evening, gone 5:30, we went down to the beach again, this time for pure wave-jumping just in front of the house so I held the Littles up and we went in really quite deep so she got well and truly watered. Nice variation of waves this evening, some 'tiddlers' and the occasional good soaker without being too violent, which is just right. Plus when I found a sea-sponge for her and gave it to her she greeted it with joy and the rather unexpected exclamation of 'A sponge! It's an animal without a backbone, an invertebrate!' right off the cuff. I was slightly surprised but surmised she must have been reading her Junior Encyclopedia of Australian Sealife. Talking of which, must remember to get down to the library tomorrow morning, we've got a ton of books to give back.

Talking of vertebrae, we tried the ray flaps today for dinner. Always an adventure, one never knows what to expect. Well, the cookery book I had consulted claimed them to be 'boneless', which, as the ray is a cartilaginous fish, is entirely true. Technically. However, they do have cartilaginous bone all the way through the flap in a a fine mesh, so you have to sort of scrape one side off and then the other. As long as you're careful and delicate it's all quite neat, but take one step wrong and you end up with shredded mush. The taste is extremely mild, with a curiously dark-fish tooth-hugging texture completely at odds with both its colour and its taste. I currently surmise that it could be well used served cold and already de-boned, as it falls into very peculiar long shreds rather than flakes like a regular fish, and I think would go well with mayo and a variety of other textures in a salad. Also it would save scraping it over at table. .... Ahem, once again, here endeth the Fish Lecture of the day. Thought you might like to know about it for the next time you were pondering over the purchase of Ray flaps. As one so often does.

Right. That's it. Goodnight, all :) xxxxx