Steve and I worked in Melbourne while the girls flaked out in the house during the first week of the school holidays. Steve took them out to an indoor play centre once or twice and I accompanied them to the local playground one afternoon. By the second week, they were ready to stretch their wings.
I took them ice-skating; they had an outing to cat café with Annie and Steve, whereby you can feed rescue cats; and we went to an adventure playground twice, one of those excursions was followed by hot chocolates and a quick hello to their furry cousin, Goose. We went to an underground bar and were locked in a room that you had to solve puzzles to escape from. We relaxed at the Lume Van Gough experience: projections of his paintings on the vast Convention Centre walls and floor, to accompanying music.
I had a restful time lunching at the National Gallery of Victoria with corn samosas, a cappuccino and cake; before we all enjoyed the Picasso exhibition, including the girls liking the porcelain and the short movie of English ten-year-olds reflecting on what one of Van Gough’s abstract portraits meant. We bought a set of wine glasses in the gallery shop that captivated Steve and I immediately – so much so that Steve requested another six for his upcoming birthday.
Other highlights for me included The Portrait of Dorian Gray with Eryn Jean Norvill playing all 26 characters, and the Japanese dinner we had with Annie beforehand; the three of us eating at the dazzling Attica restaurant where the menu included crocodile, dahl from wattle seeds, emu mousse, kangaroo with chips, ants (‘caviar’), baked cheesecake and a selection of bite-sized desserts. It was also good to catch up with my cousin and two of her girls at the popular Centre for the Moving Image for an afternoon; and another day, walk along the Black Rock boardwalk where I used to walk with my grandparents, who lived a few blocks from the beach for all of my childhood. It was a sparkling day and we walked further than I ever had before, to the marine sanctuary at the southern end. The playground nearby was built since I was last in the area almost 25 years ago, and we played hide-and-seek there too, before we dropped over for a photo in front of my grandparents’ old house. The house that my uncle built, original and modernist, that they were delighted to trade in for a three-bedroom brick house in Geelong for their late retirement years.
After all that then, it was hard to go back to work and school. Amid climbing COVID infections in the community, straining our health workforce once more, the girls only had one day back before Lara tested positive to COVID. She was tired, had headaches and sore ears for most of the time she was in isolation – her symptoms managed with Panadol and glasses of water. She rolled between her room and the bathroom on her hoverboard and had a couple of baths to enjoy some different experiences and make the most of the space that was available to her during the seven days. The girls missed their Athletics carnival, for which Rhea had qualified first in the long jump and done well in the short races on their first day back at school – and they missed the barbeque for NAIDOC week.
On Lara’s sixth day of isolation, I tested positive too. I am feeling better after a few days’ rest, during which Steve has been making all the meals and doing all the work involved in running the house, as well as all the driving, while I enjoyed the Commonwealth Games and rested.
The girls’ birthday party has been postponed for another month. Happily, we have managed to fit in some trips to our old house before settlement next Wednesday, and I am hoping for one more too.
We will see whether Steve and Rhea time their illness to avoid being sick when we’re due to go skiing in mid-August, or manage to continue to avoid illness for a few whiles more. 1
1. ‘A few whiles ago’ is an expression that Lara once used to refer to something that had occurred in the past – see May 2014.
