Soaked

Look, I'm not being funny but it's officially much warmer in Warrington, and probably a lot less wet as well so I'm feeling bit put out and I've got this desperate urge to just nip home. I've been thinking about it for a few days and it's the same scenario every time; I go mad cleaning and polishing my kitchen worktops and then finally get to hoover the stairs, the one thing I didn't do on the day we left because I ran out of time and the cases were in the car. I've thought about the un-hoovered stairs quite a lot since January and they are becoming progressively more bitty in my imagination; huge bits of black sock fluff on each stair and in all the corners where the carpet meets the woodwork. Not that I'm homesick, I'm just very, very housesick, probably because I could do with the central heating and the nice big fireplace.

Anyway, it's good to know that the curse of bank holiday weather applies just as much down under. This morning I took Ella to Sydney Aquarium at Darling Harbour, the wet weather activity I'd been saving for exactly this sort of weekend. Unfortunately every other mother of every other toddler had also been saving it for the bad weather and the whole place was like the whacky races for pushchairs.

We parked at the convention centre, which was a huge mistake because the current exhibition is "Hair Expo 2007" so the place was swarming with hairdressers and various other people with nice barnets. Last night I coloured my hair after half a bottle of rioja and this morning noticed that half the dye is splashed across my forehead. I wouldn't mind but it's not even my usual colour because I can't buy it, it's a sort of shade of purple, a mistake I'll be living with for about a month. Thus I had to suffer the indignity of pushing a pram through the place wearing a wet Berghaus coat with this enormous purple stain on my forehead. A large paper bag would have been just the job, or a burka.

At least she was wearing her new wellies.