Dee Why

Sunday afternoon and I'm relieved to tell you that Chopperdoc survived the buddy shift without getting lost in the outback. He did return home fashionably late (the shift finishing at 10.30pm but not getting back until after 1am) but there was nothing more dramatic to report than a blue-light inter-hospital transfer in the back of an ambulance, which apparently leaves even Batman unsure exactly where he's been.

(And they went spear-fishing for a Chinese take-away, so the baked beans live to see another day).

So this morning we were up bright and early and over the harbour bridge to deliver my mother's birthday present to my ex-step brother, who's flying back to the UK this afternoon. Only we didn't know what number his flat was, and as he had his mobile phone turned off, the whole thing was a disaster. I did manage to gain entry to his tower block but also gained entry to the emergency stairwell, where I found myself stuck without a key to gain access to any of the exit doors, an experience I'm not particularly keen to repeat. Needless to say, after some amount of frustration, the birthday present has returned home with us, it's fate now in the hands of Australia Post, which is a bit of a gamble with the postal service in the UK staging on and off strikes.

Then it was up the coast to Dee Why, another of Sydney's northern beaches, where we met up with Lucy and Paul and their daughter Imogen and cobbled together a barbequed brekkie of bacon and snags and alarmingly over-cooked eggs. They pitched up with their camp barbeque, we supplied the HP Sauce. Is there any greater civilised society than this, I wonder?

nb snags, n, Sausages, Australian (slang)