Thermos Flasks

This morning we headed down to the playground at Maroubra beach with our morning tea, heads held high with raisin bread, grapes, apples and a flask of hot drink each. I've bought Ella some Ovaltine in the same way I've bought a bottle of Radox bubble bath, you know, because we're playing "winter". Anyway, it didn't go un-noticed that the other mothers had bought take-out coffee from the kiosk and there wasn't a single slice of banana bread in sight. Sarah 1, Aussie mothers 0.

The blue skies and chilly weather have brought out the winter fashions. Some of the mothers looked more togged up for a week skiing in Verbier than a morning at the playground, in fact one mother sported wraparound ski shades and a puffa jacket while her little one toddled about barefoot in a sweatshirt and bottoms, which proves my point that the Sydneysiders enjoy dressing up for aesthetic reasons rather than practicality. I'd like to see them walking to the Appleton Thorn pub on a January afternoon. Puffa jackets indeed.

The thing I like about the Sydney winter so far is the cool dry days with the sky painted that endless blue. The sun shines enough to warm your back and you don't feel the biting cold we have at home, so you're not perched on a cold damp bench blowing into your hands and wiggling your feet to stay warm. You actually want to make that flask up and get outside. And anyway, it's warmer than inside the houses.

Lynda, the teacher from Nottingham, says her husband encourages her to pass the time in Gloria Jean's (a coffee house) because it's so cold inside the house they're staying in that they can see their breath when they breathe out. Our flat's not quite so bad, but it's damp in the morning; condensation all over the windows, dripping down the sliding doors obscuring the view of the flightpath. The other thing is, there's nowhere to dry your towels when you get out of the shower; no radiator to hang them on, so they just hang cold and damp and limp and require washing far more frequently. Even the curtains in the bedroom feel slightly damp, so we wheel our little radiator around the flat where we think it's needed most.

At the park today I bumped into a physiotherapist called Britney who I'd met at another park when we first came to Sydney. She has a little boy the same age as Ella and she'd given me some contacts at the time for possible jobs coming up in the local hospital. In the event I didn't need to use the contacts but she remembered me today and asked how things had been in the last five months, a question I find difficult to answer because I can't seem to find the right words to sum it all up. Thrilling, exhausting, intense, depressing, beautiful, life-changing, hot. How else do you put it into words?

"What park do you go to?" she asked. Every Australian mother has a favoured park. Going to the park in the morning is as much a part of the aussie lifestyle as spreading vegemite on their sangers.

"I like Lyne Park at Rose Bay" I replied.

"Oh I just discovered that place. How's the coffee there?"

"Fabulous"

So much for the thermos flasks, looks like the take out stuff has won. She took my mobile number and we arranged to meet next week.