Crabby

A lovely sunny Saturday and we were supposed to be going over to Scott and Steve's for their barbeque at lunchtime. That was until Batman went to the butcher to buy sausages and left the batphone on the bed, which rang in his absence, alerting me to the fact I'd be spending another day alone with Ella.

So off he toddled to the airport and I was busy bundling up the case and hand luggage for Steve to take home to Warington when Ella promptly brought up her breakfast all over her clean clothes. The barbeque just wasn't to be.

Faced with another afternoon as the local lepers, I took Ella down to Rose Bay for a walk and some sea air, where the buzzing of the hoards of flies around your ears and nose was matched only by the buzzing of the Channel 10 news helicopter hovering over the ferry wharf. Someone famous was getting married; evidently arriving by boat, though I wouldn't know a Sydney celebrity from a bar of soap so the whole thing held not even the slightest bit of interest.

And if yesterday's setting was recovery, today's was whine. Nothing was right; the sea breeze was too windy, the fleece blanket wasn't the right one (the right one being in the washing machine owing to it being covered in sick). NO she did't want a drink. NO she didn't want a cuddle.

"I wanna go Stephen and Scott's house" she wailed, "I want my barbeque".

It was as much as I could do to stop myself shopping for a hip flask because I'm fast coming to the conclusion it's the only way I'm ever going to survive the toddler years. Don't get me wrong, I'm not ruling the hip flask out, it's just hard getting into those sorts of shops with a pushchair.

Anyway, she eventually fell asleep and I discovered a good bookshop, then a toyshop where the shop assistants were clearly more excited about the toys than the kids themselves, including one bloke who was trying to sell a Duplo fire engine to a woman by running up and down the narrow aisles to demonstrate how it worked.

"WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO WOO" he shouted, "and it doesn't even run on batteries so you'll never have to worry about replacing them"

"Look, sorry, my daughter's asleep here" I said. "I know that makes me sound like a crabby old bitch, and I love the fire engine impression, but she's been up since half four so I'd appreciate if you'd tone it down a bit".

Crabby old bitch or not, I'm a tired old bitch and God help anyone who comes between Ella and the elusive nap.

Afterwards I got a coffee and parked my arse on a bench overlooking the harbour. The stiff breeze had brought out the yachties with their blue and pink and green sails, whole flotillas of them navigating the channels. I'm sure the view of yachts on the water is exactly what God had in mind when he carved Port Jackson; it's just how Sydney's supposed to look. Myself I reckon it would look better through the bottom of a glass right now, a nice glass and a nice kip.