Sydney - Richard Neville – gastro – Navman – cars – satphone – spinnaker – shopping malls - TV

I forgot to mention that yesterday I had a very small brush with CELEBRITY – yes I do love a bit of this ( Kate Headlam, Claire Cook – you will be on the same page, I am sure…) At Central Station I bought a newspaper next to – Richard Neville! I was thrilled to bits, but when I told Pete, I drew a blank. Not a clue, never heard of Richard Neville…

I wanted to say to Richard, “Well, hi, how are you! I’ve just been reading about you in the Australian Women’s Weekly! Lovely article about you and your daughter Lucy! How are things? The Life and Crimes of Charles Sobraj made a lasting impression on me!” But…I didn’t – I thought I would look SO uncool…(If you haven’t read this article, in the AWW, it was very interesting – Richard, in the avant garde in the 60s with respect to sex, drugs, rock and roll, free love, the whole shebang, has turned into a VERY strict parent, much to his daughter’s annoyance.

I spoke to Michael, my (VERY cynical) ArmyBoy yesterday, when were on the train to the Blue Mountains. He is doing a transport course in Puckapunyal. Can’t wait to get back to Townsville and HEAT. He was complaining bitterly about having a bad cold so I told him about the people in Europe with very bad gastro, and that he should be glad he just had a 7-day snottycold. He asked about the gastro and I said, “lots of people have died.” “How many, Ma?” “Well…22, last I heard.” He sighed deeply and said, “22 white people, Ma. It wouldn’t be news otherwise. How many people die in Third World countries every day, of gastro and the like?” Too true…

We have had a funny Sydney day, in Robert’s car, with our Best Friend Forever (BFF) NavMan. And…everyone is so kind! Chris (my brother…) also offered us a car, and today, when Pete asked Alistair, the yacht club manager, which way we should go to get to North Ryde (Pete doesn’t totally trust my relationship with the NavMan,) he said, “Just take my car!” How nice is that?? We could have had three cars on the go…
By the way I am so thrilled with my blog; I can see from my stats that many people are reading it, and I have 25 listed followers (not sure what benefits a follower gets…) I think this is just fabulous. I have a Celebrity (in BlogWorld) Follower, Sarah, who writes a beautiful blog called Ah…the Possibilities, which I have been reading for a year or so. I looked at it yesterday, and idly noted that she too had followers. Oh good…how many does she have? Well…nearly 2,000…oh…so 25 is NOT quite so fabulous! (Anyway, look at Sarah’s blog, it is so nice, so pretty…she obviously knows how to put photos up…And…she too loves dolphins!!)
So what did we do…well we didn’t have lovely hot showers…the water was cold….and Sydney is cold…brrrr… So we were only slightly clean today, as opposed to TOTALLY clean yesterday. First stop, North Ryde, to look at a satellite phone. Addcom; all very schmick… I came in with Pete and sat in a beautifully furnished conference room while he did business with Robert Louis, a very nice man, who let him walk off with a whole system, to test it out. Very funny…it is all state-of-the art technology…and he had to leave us to find – a screwdriver! The only way to get the battery in or out…
Next stop – St Ives. This drive through the leafy backblocks of Sydney was – just beautiful! Yes it is still cold, but the sky was blue, the clouds white, and these suburbs are so very - well there is no word but salubrious… We found our address in St Ives (thank you, NavMan Girl!) and Pete spent a happy hour spreading out second-hand spinnakers on the driveway. I retreated to a sunny garden step and played boggle on my iphone while they negotiated a satisfactory arrangement.
Next – and do you realise how important my role was?? I was in charge of programming NavMan!! – we made our way to Chatswood Westfield shopping mall. Oh no we didn’t…first we went to St Ives Shopping Mall! I was suffering from a great need for COFFEE. This was a very nice little mall. Good coffee but...oh dear, the food wasn’t all that yummy…but never mind! I was re-caffeine-ated! Pete had many long phone calls so I went and talked to the concierge, Michael, who seemed like THE most snooty young man on the planet. While Pete lolled on the Mercedes couches (this is a very Mercedes sort of shopping mall…) I idly asked Michael (Mike!) if he knew of any good computer-fixers in the area (my gmail has gone what I can only describe as - psycho.) I thought Mike would turn up this nose but no! He was on the phone and onto the internet, trying to find a solution for my problem. (My newest BFF!!) I sat on a comfy chair in his territory, and occasionally got up to look at shops. I found a lovely children’s wear shop…50% off! Well great, stylish dresses for the Fairy Princesses, Eva and Jemima… I found two, grey, with lots of pink frills and trimmings, just the thing! 50% off! But…the original price for EACH dress was…$475…so I bought two… OH NO I DIDN’T!!!
Pete came back from PhoneWorld and back on the car, back to Navman. And now off to Chatswood, to a huge Westfield shopping centre. Those who know me well will know that…I get a bit freaky in a big shopping mall…Pete still doesn’t know, although he may or may not have noticed that I had to roll out a few Aspro Clear as soon as we got back to the safety of 2XS… We were after: a TV for the boat, with DVD included, and a new set of scales, to stop ourselves from getting horribly fat…yes we are neurotic…
So now we are back safely on the boat; I have been Aspro-ed back into sanity; we are NOT horribly fat, in spite of not being able to weigh ourselves for four weeks, and…we have TV!!! The system Pete bought looked just tiny on JB HiFi but now on the boat, it looks huge! (21”…)We are watching Catalyst on the ABC; oh the bliss!
Tomorrow- who knows??