Darling Harbour

So much for the weather forecast; it's been such a glorious day I've burnt my beak.

After a cracking electrical storm last night (it being storm season as well as fly season and bushfire season and, dare I mention, cockroach season as well), the clouds had burned off by about nine o'clock this morning, which felt like a real bonus given that we were expecting a rainy day.

And they're not joking when they describe it as storm season either. We've probably had a thunder storm every week since the beginning of October, real storms with fork lightening and huge claps of thunder that almost shake the building, the lightening so intense it lights the night sky purple and as bright as daylight.

The funny thing is, the storms always come at night; never in the day. There must be a reason for this, you know, a proper scientific reason, but it seems to me it's just God's way of putting on a show because if you're going to do fork lightening, it might as well be at night.

Anyway, we've been down to Darling Harbour today and spent pretty much the whole day there as well. The lure was the Thai Food and Music Festival at Tumbalong Park (think pork larb, massaman curry and mango sticky rice - though for Ella it was more cheese and biscuits and seedless grapes, as you can see).

And having tired of the warbling tones of the charming Thai dancers (with their imaginative numbers, especially the one called "Amazing Thailand" which I think might have been the music from the advert for Thai Airways) we carried on to have a squizz at a free photographic exhibition, "The Earth from Above" which is taken from the book of the same name and includes all sorts of stunning photography from around the world, (though the only bit of England they thought worthy of inclusion was the Uffington white horse. It could have been worse I suppose; it could have been the rude man of Cerne).

Afterwards it was the adventure playground at Tumbalong Park; great for kids, logistical nightmare for parents as absolutely no sitting around on your arse while the little one runs up and down the hills - the place is so large and confusing and unfenced that you'll likely lose the kids altogether if you take your eye off them for even a second.

And then she slept. For almost two hours. What bliss.