Party Animals

Well, we came to party – and party we did.

Sunday morning saw Lindsey and me heading to Drummond Street to collect Austin and Julia. Mind you, locating Drummond Street was made more problematic by Lindsey telling me I was going to turn right. Obediently, I pulled into the right hand lane. “Where are you going?” asked Lindsey. “You’d be better in the middle lane.” Odd, though I, but she was the navigator. I pulled back into the middle lane. “Go up that road” said Lindsey, pointing to a road to the left!! Her sad and pathetic excuse for this novel form of navigating was that doctors always have to transpose left and right when looking at their patients!

Anyway. We headed back to Mount Helen and all squashed into Lindsey’s car and headed back to Carlton (don’t know why we didn’t just arrange to spend the whole weekend in Carlton really) for the Family Party. Café Italia. Absolutely splendid restaurant. Coped remarkably well with the influx of Hydes for Sunday lunch. I fear that the waiter wanting to take drinks orders found the experience akin to herding a large number of cats. Mind you, I forget the full on effect of a complete Hyde family gathering. It takes me a while to get my ear back into tune with being spoken to simultaneously by 6 million people all at once. Well, perhaps not 6 million. But lots. We all had a fantastic time. Everyone was there except Tabitha and Freyja. William howled. The children played. We all ate and drank and chatted. I had a fantastic piece of black trevally. Haven’t had black trevally before, just ordinary trevally. Was lovely. (Trevally is a fish for those that don’t know.) And I drank fizzy wine. I have decided that if wine is to be consumed at lunchtime then the only sort is fizzy wine (though I did have a glass of red when everyone else was drinking scotch and/or more red). It was a good afternoon. But then Belinda decided it was time to take the Howling William away and necessarily took Matthew and Sage as well. Our party wandered off into the city centre. Lindsey and Emily went to change some sweatshirts of Emily’s. Austin and Julia ambled off shopping. The Builder and I went back to the shot tower in Melbourne Central and had a proper look at it. Then we explored the Australian Geographic shop and bought presents for the grandchildren. An amble through Myer, drooling over the kitchenware which was on special. Then we all gathered outside Myer, flagged down Ian in Lindsey’s car and came back to Ballarat.

At least Ian stayed awake on the way back. Just as well, really. He was driving. The rest of us slept our way back. Nice quick trip! Absolutely fantastic sausages for dinner. And more wine J

It’s been absolutely lovely weather since we got here. Crisp and sunny in the mornings, pleasantly warm in the afternoons, frosty and cold at night. Nice for us, though the reservoirs are looking very, very dry. The one by the Western Freeway heading into Melbourne is extremely low. When I first started running up and down the Western Freeway, about 20 years ago, water routinely ran over the overflow. There is now absolutely no water in the overflow dam. Nice holiday weather, then, but the locals could really do with some rain.

This week appears to have become somewhat complicated. I’ve had to write down the schedule! Offline intermittently for a few days now. Will update the blog as and when Internet access becomes available