Home Alone

Earlier in the week Tereasa made a rather on the spot decision to take the kids to go and visit my parents in Toowoomba (over 600kms from Rockhampton). So on with the arrangements. Did you know that it could be possible to take 2 hours and thirty minutes to order a couple of plane tickets over the web? I surely did not. It started with a couple of drop down menus not working on the site, so I checked all of the usual suspects such as the sites listed browser compatibility and the java settings on my Mozilla browser but no luck. So this lead to a few fruitless phone calls first to the airline and then to the credit company and finally after much confusion there was a realisation that what had appeared to be a + symbol on my credit card was really a worn number 4. Then as if lady luck had changed her mode the drop down menus started to function again and I was home free. With printed tickets in hand the frayed tempers subsided to harmonious smiles once again and the smiles returned to faces.

Wednesday morning when Sheryl woke up the first thing that she said before she was even fully out of bed was daddy how many hours is it till we get on the big plane. Then before I even had time to tell her that I was taking off at 10:00 am the phone rang and grandma was asking about how long to go. I could see that both parties were keen to catch up.

It has been eerily quite at home since and I must admit to missing the girls though it has been nice to have some vacant possession of the television viewing time. I think I managed quite well at my first food shop in at least 12 months. I decided to get those things that get put off because kids just won’t eat it and I discovered that you can actually buy a pre-marinated kangaroo mini-roast. I cooked this I the oven at 200 degrees for about 45 minutes with my chunky cut veggies along side for the entire time and a good sprinkle of Italian herbs over the lot and it was to die for. My favorite little trick is to take a couple of whole cloves of garlic roughly pealed ad toss them into the spray oiled tray with everything else after cooking any excess peal will just fall off the garlic and you eat the entire clove. There is only a lovely hint of the strong garlic flavour left in the clove and even those who object to spicy foods would have to agree on this one mmmm.

Preparation of a pitch

In preparation for the Christmas gathering it was determined that no Christmas would be complete with out an all inclusive game of cricket. So Barry kindly volunteered himself to become the first official curator of the Alexandra St Cricket oval (this being our first Christmas in residence).

The Day started as any other day with my usual preparations and heading off to work at around 8:00am. Barry started his day in the usual way and headed off from Blackwater at about 9:00am. He made the two hour journey in to Rockhampton with out anything of consequence happening and arrived mid morning according to plan. It all looked like it would be over for Barry before I returned home from work and he would be at home with his dog fed and relaxing for his own dinner.

We had previously determined that the oval was to be situated on the otherwise disused area to the back of our house yard that was to be reserved for the eventuality that our landlord might attract a light industry to the three bay shed towards the back of the allotment. With this area not presently in use and the grass in a grossly overgrown state Barry’s first decision was that the lawn mower was not going to do this in a single cut. He would in fact have to set the blades as high as they could possibly go, cut the grass and then reset the blade height to lower setting for the second cutting. So he proceeded with the blades set high and was off to a good start.

Barry worked on for the morning with his distinctive black hat molded down over his head and all but covering his shoulders. It was down by the shed that disaster struck, Barry did not see the large baser brick hidden in the long grass as the lawn mower careered in to it. The lawn mower was rendered unusable.

After some hours of repairs carried out on the lawn mower Barry comes to the decision that he will do better to temporarily abandon the old lawn mower which belongs to his father in law in favor of a new mower (he will just have to repair the old one before returning it). The day drags on.

It is 6:00pm when I return home to see a rather exhausted Barry just finishing off the second round of mowing on his brand new mower. After spending a couple of hours buying a mower and arranging means of getting it to our place Barry will be glad to put this saga behind him. He is understandably tired and frustrated as he comes in to the fish and chips that we have rapidly purchased for the unexpected dinner party. At 7:30 Barry’s tired family climb into the family vehicle headed to Blackwater. They leave behind them one ride on mower in need of repair.