Bi-Polar

Tuesday 25th September

Talk about my name being mud; I wasn't the most popular person in the office today - it turns out I went away to Orange with the keys to the company car in my handbag and didn't realise what I'd done until Friday night, by which time they'd already left three messages on our answerphone at home.

Typically, I'd chosen the only weekend in the year when the car was being used to drive to Canberra for some charity event or other, or rather, it wasn't, because the keys were the other side of the blue mountains.

The fact they'd been ringing our home phone proves my theory that the people I work with don't listen to a word I say, because I'd told them a couple of times that we were away for the rest of the week, and they did have my mobile number, they just didn't use it. In any case, I don't think they really care what I'm doing when I'm not at work because they've certainly never invited me to their parties or their barbeques or away for a weekend to their country properties. I think working part-time has something to do with this because you never really feel part of the team if you can't join them down the pub on Friday afternoons.

Anyway, today was the playgroup excursion, something they do every term, and since April it's fallen to me to organise it, which is a bit like leaving me in charge of a tuck shop because the trips I've chosen have nothing to do with the kids and everything to do with the bits of Sydney I haven't had time to see yet.

So today I took eight pre-schoolers and their parents by train to the National Maritime Museum at Darling Harbour, where a lady dressed as a pirate took them all on a treasure hunt and dressed them up in costume, leaving me free to have a sneaky look at the exhibitions, which included the anchor from General Phillip's ship Sirius.

"Jackie, look at this" I said

"What?"

"I think it might be the actual anchor from the Sirius. Hang on...yes, bloody hell, it's the real thing"

Jackie fixed me with the look she reserves to indicate she thinks I'm bonkers, bonkers in an eccentric British kind of way, at least that's what I hope. Jackie wouldn't know a historic artefact from a bar of soap, one of her favorite sayings.

"Oh Smashing" she replied in a mock English accent. The Australians don't say smashing in their own language, it's what they think the poms say in theirs.

"Yeah well, I think it's interesting. It's your history, not mine"

Afterwards we walked back around Darling Harbour in the sunshine and I commented to Jackie how lucky I felt to be out here in the sun and being paid for it.

"You're weather bipolar" she said. "The minute it clouds over, that's it, you've had enough, you want to go home. Then the sun comes out and the emigration's back on again".

She's right, I'm weather bi-polar. It's good to have a diagnosis, perhaps now I can get some help for it.