The Rocks Market

"Are you admiring my tagine?"

"It's lovely but I don't know what you are going to do with it"

"I'm going to cook cous-cous in it"

"No, I mean I don't know how you'll get it back to England"

"I'll have to put it in my hand luggage"

I thought about this. There are different restrictions on cabin baggage for long-haul flights these days. He has a point. Perhaps we'll have to stay here.

We were out bright and early again this morning. Parked the car at Argyle Cut, which is a tunnel cut in the rock between Sydney Cove and Darling Harbour. When I was at school, my woodwork teacher made me saw through a plank of wood as a punishment for talking too much. It took me a whole hour, after which he threw both ends out for the dustman. The Argyle cut is a bit like that. It formed a useful road but it was really just about giving the convicts something to do if they had too much free time on their hands. At least they saw something productive for their labours. The plank of wood was one of life's bitter lessons.

We were down at the Rocks because Darren had booked a didgeridoo lesson. We have one at home which sits forlornly in the guest bedroom as, although we can play it, neither of us can master the circular breathing required to play it for any length of time. An hour and a half later, there's still no sign of any circular breathing, though Darren has announced he may have to buy a second didgeridoo to practice on. We'll have a matching pair at this rate.

While Darren fiddled with his didge, I took Ella for a stroll through the weekend markets at the Rocks. The markets sit almost at the base of the approach span to the harbour bridge. If you look to the end of the road you catch the enormous grey hulk of ironwork and the end of the granite pylon at Dawes Point. I'm still not bored of this sight and want to jump up and down shouting "coathanger" whenever it comes into view. I'll never be cool.

Ella whined like a rabid dingo until I bought her a windmill to divert her attention. The windmill bought me ten minutes browsing, then she spotted a chocolate stall selling rocky road, which led to more dingo noises. I bought her some turkish delight, which allowed me a further twenty minutes in the market. By the time Darren emerged from the didgeridoo shop, I was sitting outside a cafe nursing a long black coffee and rocking back and forth like a crazy lady while she ran round and round her pushchair. We had three aborted attempts at finding somewhere to lunch because:

(1) The first place, an irish cafe, had shamrocks painted on the windows but only three things on the menu, one of which was a rhubarb crumble. Ella wanted "cake" and I had already spied the cake stand, entirely empty except for some old crumbs. The waitresses were all exactly like Mrs Doyle from Craggy Island, without actually encouraging us to "go on, go on" because we couldn't catch their eye to get served. We moved on.

(2) Having installed ourselves in a second, more promising cafe, we remembered that the car was on a parking meter which would run out in ten minutes time and

(3) Having finally decided to drive to Centennial Park for lunch in the cafe, and having already told Ella she could play in the fountain, we arrived to find the whole place cordoned off as though it's the scene of a crime. Perhaps they've poisoned someone with a muffin.

We went home, where Ella vomitted at the dining table while we ate our lunch. And then I felt like a bad, bad mummy for my lack of patience this morning. She has a virus and she's really making us pay.