Before I embark further, just another little anecdote from Julie (a labmate of Ian's back from Texas who's now in Australia too.... they live in Melbourne...) …. Walked into sitting room one day to discover a HUGE spider in the middle of it, white, hairy, utterly out-sized and totally unusual so they quickly stepped out and shut the door. No, this is really weird can't be something normal, perhaps it's escaped from the zoo so they call the local zoo. No, we aren't missing any spiders, it's not ours. Don't worry. My advice to you is to shut the door to the room, put a towel under the door, and come back in about four days' time to see if it's gone. So they did. And it was. After careful inspection they decided to use the sitting room again. But I mean REALLY, you know you're in Australia when even the local zoo doesn't know what the hell the oversize arachnid is sitting on your couch and smoking your pipe.
Meanwhile.. what brought this on. Oh yes, the Littles went for a playdate today at Jenna's and enjoyed it greatly – there were just three girls in total and it was quite nice. But at one point we saw a MOST unusual insect crawling about, bright iridescent blue and apparently fluttering at the back but then we saw that it was actually just a beetle with a moth attached by accident to the back. After a while the moth flew away but the incredibly bright and beautiful blue green beetle remained, like an improbably jewel crawling about in lumbering hurry on the concrete. No-one had ever seen anything like it before, and didn't seem at all surprised by that. We find that's what most people are like – 'WHAT'S THAT???' the British person yells, in either horror, excitement, awe or a combination of all three. “Aww, that? Ah, that's interesting, isn't it? No idea. Never seen it before.' They just look, never touch, and if completely necessary shift it four feet to the left and carry on. We'd probably more likely perspire, trap it, google it, submit it to the Royal Entomological Society, gas and pin it, write a small novel on it and talk about it for the next quarter century before we dissolved into slavering oblivion. They just have another piece of watermelon and pop another beer.
So what else. Lovely lazy morning (little didn't have a stitch of clothing until about 11 and looked like an utter hairy savage), building dens, getting up late and generally debauching. Finally decided on a menu and went shopping for it, back just in time to have a lunch before going to Jenna's to play. Quite a quiet playdate by recent standards, but apparently much enjoyed by all – there was doolshouse playing, there was a lot of hide and seek, there were huge offerrings of sticky buns and watermelon, there was trampoline bouncing and sliding, and there was a barbie video... what more could a girl ask for. We passed Lucy's house on the way home and she was waving to us through the window - all very friendly and local sort of stuff.
And then.... well we finally got round to doing some 'work' …. that is, the Non read me a relatively easy book, we did some maths questions and some writing work. This latter just a very short little one-sheet print-out exercise of 'finish the story' …. one of which was slightly eye-opening. The 'given' start of the story was that a boy gets a new dog, but the dog keeps on getting out of the garden via a hole in the fence and chasing cars, and the boy needs to stop it. What does he do? Well apparently, what he does it give the dog back to the pet store – or 'the dog place' as the Littles called the supposed entity. Well, it's a viable solution and takes the story forward, so she wrote it out and practised her writing with it. Afterwards we suggested that perhaps the boy might have got the hole in the fence fixed and stopped the dog getting out instead of going through the rather final and traumatic solution of getting rid of the dog. A dim light of dawning glimmered there and there was some giggling, but I think we've generally got a way to go with the whole logical reasoning … well not quite, the common sense aspect of thing I suppose.
Oh, and today I have to say we had the most SUBLIME dinner of babecued prawns... the sort of thing that would be utterly, prohibitively and totally out of possibility in the UK (in fact I don't even know how you'd go about sourcing it but anyway) a huge amount of the biggest prawns ever skewered and barbied. I'll tell you what, melon, baby spinach and mint salad goes SO well, it's not even funny. We also did very well-ovened sweet potatoes, just simply buttered and salted, with them and that was great too. Also tried several accompaniments and dips, the best was I think a simple garlic, olive oil and basil one – don't want anything that will overpower the prawns too much but just a little lubrication. Tried a grapefruit, red onion and parsley salsa but actually it's a bit much, have to save that sort of thing for blue fish with lots of oil, the prawns get too drowned by such strong flavours. Oh, but the melon spinach and mint, absolutely recommend. And the sweet potato. Yum.
As usual, there was the customary after-dinner running'round'the'sitting'room'in'a'cemicircle' ending to the day to raucous music. All entrants clutch a moose and run round the sitting room in a tight circle, prefereably to shrieks and dizziness. Imminent collapse ensues. It's all very satisfying, I'd thoroughly recommend it. No? Don't know why. You must be mad.
That's about it. Lots of love to all, V xxxxxxxxxxxx
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