The Eclectic Interweb

Moving away from the sadness of the last post, we come back to my ongoing struggle with reality. Almost literally moving from the sublime to the the ridiculous.

We discovered in short order just how much of a problem the collapse of the car was to be. To begin with, our Chrysler Voyager is a seven seater. On a day to day basis, it’s *more* than big enough to suit our needs carrying all of us, the dogs and assorted bags or shopping etc in air-conditioned comfort. We can even get the mothers wheelchair in there with no problems and *still* have room spare.

However… for the past few weeks there have been eleven of us which makes a seven seater a little inadequate for the task of transporting us around Sydney

As I wrote earlier, we all went off to Sydney on Saturday, watched a film and spent an hour in the rain watching something bizarre. Naturally afterwards we needed to get home. After a quick conference we decided the wife and I would take all the kids home to get them to bed, and leave the adults to come home on the train (Central Station isn’t far from Darling Harbour). After some additional discussion we decided to take the daughter as well because her kids were getting fractions and we felt the baby would be better off with her mother than with us.

So, sometime around 9:30 p.m., eight of us (yes I know it’s illegal, but needs must etc.) set off for home. Little traffic on the road meant that we were back by 10:10 p.m. or so and were quite pleased to be back. Of course I wasn’t ‘home’ as such because I had to go back to Blacktown train station to collect the others when they arrived.

In fact, as we pulled up at the house the phone rang but the wife wasn’t able to get to it before whoever it was rang off. She assumed it was the others calling to tell us they were at Blacktown waiting for me so despite being exhausted, I zoomed off.

Because they were waiting I put my foot down and arrived less than 15 minutes later… and saw nobody I knew waiting for me!

I call the wife… who calls the nephew… who doesn’t answer the phone. I wait, and chat to the wife.

After a few minutes the phone rang. It’s the ‘others’. Where are they? Still at Central Station in Sydney. Eh what

Seems despite it being Saturday night there was only one train going out of Sydney and even that one wasn’t due to leave until 10:20 p.m. I groaned… settle back… and wait contemplating as I do the wonderful workings of the jinx and how it affects even the simplest parts of my life. 😀

I spent the next hour drifting in and out of sleep leaning against the window hoping any roving yobs wouldn’t decide I was fair game for a laugh. Obviously of course they did arrive and we left for home… yet again.

Of course, being a Saturday, the youngest had to go to her ice-skating lesson early so I’d been up since 5:30 a.m. and was feeling a little tired by this time. However, the night before I’d prepared the final ham of the year studding it with cloves and getting it ready for the oven. So at 5:30 a.m. I ‘d put it in a slow oven, maybe 160ºC, with the rind on to protect it and left it to cook when we went out.

Four hours later it was ready for the glaze, and not long after that, it was sitting on the worktop in all its glory ready to eat. It was covered with a gauze umbrella to keep the flies away, and left to await our return!

This meant when we *did* eventually return… at midnight… it was there to provide us with an extremely tasty and satisfying snack.

Am I complaining? Nope. I was happy to suffer all sorts of inconveniences in order to have a few slices of a well prepared ham… and besides… I discovered that instead of crawling off to her bed, the wife had waited up for me to make sure I was home safe. Awww…. nice! 🙂