queenpeanutio

Chromatic, I stand on the side of the road
Watching for a car, a truck so I can go.
I’ve got to get myself out of this nothing place
I’ve been running around with a tied shoe lace

What a year it has been
What a year it has been
Lost my love, shed my skin
What a year it has been

There’s a cheer leader squad on the side of the road
Cheering the night now for somewhere to go
There’s me on the corner, the corner is home
Look at the controller we’re about to hit a new zone

What a year it has been
What a year it has been
Lost my love, shed my skin
What a year it has been

Flashing lights from up above
So close, too close was crazy love
So gather up your broken brow
Millions together will do it somehow

What a year it has been
What a year it has been
And as it creeps upon the end
What a year it has been

I’m alright.

Alex Lloyd – ‘What A Year’

Hello.  I’m back.

It’s been a year alright.  Maybe I’ll tell you about it sometime.  Maybe I’ll open up just a little to allow the light of cathartic blurb to bleach the tired, dark and disused floorboards.  Or maybe I’ll just make light of it all with a nonchalant flick of neck and hair and deftly change the subject.

Yes, I thought of you.  I toyed with the idea of talking about the weather, or mutual friends.  Food.  Surely we could talk about food?  But even food was too personal to write about.

Quite frankly, there was nothing honest to write about until I knew what the hell was going on.  Now I do and I can write.  I’m released from the deceptive bondage of hope, reconciliation, naivete, and whatever other trappings of stupidity had me ensnared in that sticky, messy cobweb.

I am the one that got away.  I consider myself fortunate to have escaped.  My wings are drying, and I’m ready to do some amazing things.

Now that the dramatic overture has concluded, it’s time for the flashback… dear reader, there is so much you have missed out on!

Charlie started walking before his second birthday, defying all doctors’ prognoses.

I got fit again and ran my first 10km races at pretty respectable times.  Back to a size 8 and I can finally wear my favourite jeans once more.

I made some cool friends.  A couple of whom now feel “life long”, and who love and take care of Charlie and I.

Charlie and I visited Sydney, twice.

My marriage ended.

And I struggled.  And I cried.  And I wanted to make it all better.

I grieved.  I groaned like I was giving birth.  I imagined scenarios that tortured me.  I dug up every good memory and relived it a thousand times.  I beat myself up.  I blamed myself.

And then one day I suddenly didn’t.

I was thinking about other stuff.  Not all of it wholesome.  Not all of it healthy.  But my mind was busy, I was busy, and amazing people started populating my life.

Life is exciting right now.  So incredibly exciting.  I have the built-up-wave feeling on the inside, the ‘potential kinetic energy’ thing building more pressure… good pressure.

Clear the stage….

Ah, the bliss. We have been having such beautiful weather for the past week. Every morning presents like an immaculately wrapped gift. Arising at 6.30 or 7am is no chore as I open the curtains and am blinded by the sunlight and bright blue sky. I love these days. They hold such promise. What will we do today? Quick, let’s get ready and get out there!

Saturday 2 January was a cracker of a day. I even beat Charlie out of bed to get ready and prepared for a morning walk with mum. It was already so hot outside at 8am we thought it

best we get moving before it reached the forecast high of 33 degrees.

We did one of the ‘regular’ walks, leaving mum’s place and heading down towards the Heathcote River. On the way we critique the various weatherboard villas we pass, some restored, some not, as well as the gardens. When we reach the river, we walk the little track that meanders beside it and I feel warm inside as I am reminded that walkers greet each other as they pass in opposite directions. Yes, I remember this now. Elderly couples holding hands, athletic mothers with three wheeler buggies, guys taking their dogs out for a splash in the Heathcote.

We were exhausted and wilting upon our return home, so had an hour’s downtime before Caleb and Nicki came over for lunch, after which we went in to the centre of town to the Botanic Gardens to feed the ducks and do some more walking in the salubrious surroundings. We might as well have been in the Piazza San Marco for the mobbing we got by the ducks. The above photo really doesn’t represent the scene properly. If there was such a thing as a ‘swarm’ of ducks this would’ve been it.

I never thought I’d be frightened of as benign a creature as a duck, but as they surrounded me and encroached ever increasingly on my personal space I did start to feel a bit creeped out, especially as their cold and damp webbed feet started clambering over my havaiana clad tootsies! The Botanical Gardens are huge, encompassing 79 acres, and were established by the founding fathers of Christchurch who brought with them the gardening traditions of their homeland.

Only 13 years since the pioneers arrived in the swampy, grassy wetlands of Christchurch, the first English oak was planted within the gardens in 1863. This was to commemorate the marriage of Queen Victoria’s eldest son, Prince Albert Edward. Many of the huge old trees were shipped from England, and after a sea voyage of six months, plunged into the surrounding river Avon to revive.

Once our leisurely stroll around the Gardens came to an end we crossed the road to the old Gothic university, now the Arts Centre, and revived ourselves with sparkling Elderflower juice.

The photo below is an installation in one of the old campus’s quadrangles. It’s made out of steel and is suspended by wires that attach it to the surrounding buildings. It always makes me happy for some reason.

Meet another local beauty – Kaituna Valley. Nestled away between the many rolling hills on Banks Peninsula, this idyllic spot next to the Kaituna River is another family favourite for picnics.

A short walk from the picnic site where we enjoyed tea, biscuits and Christmas cake, is the gentle stream meandering through the majestic native bush.

We wheeled Charlie’s buggy down into the creek and he had fun splashing the shallow water with long sticks.

On the 30 minute drive back home, we stopped off at Kaituna Valley Orchards and bought a bucket of ripe peaches and a bucket of juicy nectarines – $3 a bucket, mm mmmm.

Say hello to Orton Bradley Park, a beautiful expansive working farm park half an hour’s drive out of Christchurch.

We used to come here regularly as a family and it’s kiddie paradise. It comprises rolling hills and pastures, walking tracks, and a creek where I used to catch eels using a long stick, some wool and a piece of sausage off the barbeque. My record was eight which I carried to the picnic site and built a rock fortress in which to keep them. I watched them slithering around all over each other until eventually they would break out one by one and slither back to the creek some twenty metres away.

Gross huh?!

With romantic eeling notions in mind, I did pack some string and some raw chipolatas to have a stab at this new generation of Orton Bradley eels, but the creek was running low and I had to settle for building a dam instead.

Charlie chased the tame ducks, Caleb, Nicki, Dad and I invented a new ball-throwing game and as aforementioned, I built a fantastic dam under Dad’s supervision which I vow to return to before leaving Christchurch.

I’ve been out two nights in the five weeks I’ve been here, and these photos are here to prove it! On a balmy Wednesday evening Caleb, Nicki and I went into ‘The Strip’ (Oxford Terrace, next to the Avon River in the middle of Christchurch). We found a great new bar called the “Bangalore Polo Club”. It was styled very much in a colonial vain, and they have adopted the Long Bar tradition of providing monkey nuts to the guests who throw the shells on the floor.

I liked the styling of the bar and took some arty photos in the toilets!

After a few chilled glasses of sauvignon blanc as the sun went down, we moved on to one of my favourite places on earth: Winnie Bagoes. In all my travels I have never come across such incredibly yummy pizzas as at Winnies.

Apart from losing my brand new lipstick in the cab on the way home, it was an excellent evening.

Have you ever felt like others have all the luck and the particular situation you’re in could only happen to you? Me too. Like now. I’ve had ‘stomach problems’ (euphemism) for four weeks and I could swear I am fatter now than ever before in my life. Something like that could only happen to me. I even dilly dallied around on taking antibiotics in the hope that I would ‘suffer’ some rapid weight loss but alas, alack, I’m stacking on the pounds! I mean it though. For instance, this evening when I changed Charlie’s nappy on the floor of Caleb and Nicki’s “Cinema Room” I actually had to undo the top button of my trousers for fear of being sliced in half by a thin strap of corduroy (it was far to hot for corduroy anyway, silly girl).

Right, got that off my chest. Which reminds me – it’s not just my belly and thighs that have doubled in size, …. oh never mind.

I’ve been rubbish lately at writing. So this is going to be a whirlwind catch up with lots and lots of lovely photos to gaze at. Here we go:
Sumner beach, where I learnt to swim.

When Dad arrived in Christchurch back from Koh Samui, we had a picnic in Scarborough (one end of Sumner Beach). We had ham, tomato, brie and mustard ciabattas handmade by Dad. We fed the birds, larked around, went really high in swings and went on the horsey thing in the playground (remember, there’s no public liability in NZ when it comes to playgrounds so the sky is (sometimes literally) the limit when it comes to dangerous playground toys).

“Hi! I’m
standing in a park and in the background is a tree that resembles a giant pineapple!”

It has really struck me how easy it is to get around in Christchurch. Well, I guess everyone drives, but there are never traffic jams, you can always find a park, and if you are pushed to park in a car park well you’re up for the hefty fee of about $2 an hour.

Daddy dearest enjoying the salubrious surroundings. Ubiquitous seagull in the background. Swings and slide noticeable, but no horsey thing in shot and I’ve checked and I don’t have a photo of it to show you!

This rather random shot is the clock tower at Scarborough, but I thought I’d be ‘artistic’ and add some dramatic effects!! Scary huh?!

In New Zealand, and even more so in Christchurch, the weather can change very quickly. There isn’t sufficient land mass to have any real effect on the pressure systems and so we have to make do with whatever Australia or Antarctica throw at us. One day it can be 29 degrees and glorious, the next day 13 degrees and raining, forcing you to dig out your thermals. So, the general rule of thumb is that if you get dealt a cracker of a day you mobilise the troops and utilise that day! One such day hit us pre-Christmas and we rolled out in our tanks, I mean our station wagons (estates to you English folk!) and headed for the beach.
The rock in the back ground is called ‘Cave Rock’. You can walk through it. The tide comes in and sea water rushes through it’s many caverns. Such a fun place for children (if a little dangerous!). Christchurch is on the rim of an ancient volcano and so there is volcanic rock everywhere (grey and red), and we also have grey sand on our beaches as a result.

We hit the beach at 10am (a sign that we are getting old), with Charlie’s big truck, a picnic hamper and a trowel. I really can’t explain what happened to me, but I became obsessed with building some kind of canal/fortification and palmed Charlie off to his extended family whilst I dug away amonst the rock pools creating my sand empire. It started off as Surfer’s Paradise but soon my lust for developing turned it into a mini-Dubai (yuck by the way) and I had a whole miriad of man-made canals acting as boundaries for poorly designed yet imposing palaces while my poor family looked after Charlie….

Charlie showed no fear of the water and was rather worryingly gung-ho about the whole affair. He was dragging his ‘holder’ into deeper, more treacherous waters at any opportunity to all of our peril. Tut tut. (Secretly proud).

This is what someone looks like when they’ve just purchased the top of the range barbeque and are using it (with others) for the first time (grilling a couple of snags for your fiancee doesn’t count).

The first barbeque at Chez Caleb and Nicki, and they went a bit overboard on the catering front, ensuring a steady diet of meat, meat and meat for the next fortnight (lamb kebabs are surprisingly good crumbled over muesli).

Can you detect the smugness in Caleb’s eyes? I can!! But I guess I know him really well…

Meet George and Max. They are Charlie’s cousins. Well, technically they’re his third cousins, but that’s just silly. They’re my cousin Michael’s kids. And they are sensational. They love Charlie to bits, they build huts and they watch cool DVDs together. Oh, and they all have long eyelashes. I was babysitting them whilst Mike and Cath went to a wedding (they took their eldest, James, with them). It was a very funny afternoon.

Yes, it’s been quite a week. The fitness programme which was to transform me from Matt Lucas to Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 has had to be delayed a week, which angers such a committed fitness FREAK as myself. Oh the frustration!

But onto Charlie. Poor wee man. He has been suffering this week physically. Beleaguered by a constant stream of green snot from both nostrils, two eye teeth (aka ‘fangs’) cutting through tender gums, an infection in his right ear, a rattly cough and, to top it off, conjunctivitis. He is one sticky, gooey mess. He no longer trusts tissues and will go to great and imaginative, sometimes aggressive lengths to avoid them.

He is on antibiotics, which for Charlie, means diarrhoea, lots of it, lots and lots and lots of it. To the point where I had to abandon my cloth nappy experiment totally and, what’s more, have started daily stealth missions to various public rubbish bins to dump bags full of foul smelling nappies that Mum’s fortnightly rubbish bin collection service just can’t accommodate.

But, a cold and bunged up sinuses can’t keep a good dog down and Charlie has been lapping up the Christchurch sunshine like an animal who eats sunshine out of a bowl like a dog. Okay, moving right along.

The photo here is of Charlie in the garden with Mum. The lady from next door came over and insisted we take the pretty pink ride-on and the little paddling pool you will see in subsequent photos.

Once again, Charlie is having serious issues with self propulsion, so needs to be pushed. He would prefer to push the toy along shopping trolley style whilst walking on his knees, but after finding his knees black and blue the other night at bath time I have nipped that one in the bud.

“Could you be…. the most miniature pool in the world?”

Well yes, quite possibly.

In fact, I’m sure that by the time Charlie pee’d in that pool twice, the water temperature would’ve doubled.

Having just grappled with that thought I am retrospectively so glad I didn’t sip any of the ‘tea’ he was offering me.

Charlie is magnetically drawn to Mum’s (i.e. Nana) environmentally friendly lawn mover.

He loves that, and the vacuum cleaner.

Hang on… I have a major Dragon’s Den idea… a detachable baby ride-on seat that you can attach to vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers! Don’t steal my idea, I will so know it was you.

I feel a product endorsement coming on!!

I promised my Mum I’d go to bed at 10.15pm, and here I am at 11.54pm tap tapping away. I must be being fuelled by the amazing dinner we had tonight of salmon fillet, jersey benne new potatoes, fresh asparagus and cherry tomato and avocado salad. I can’t get over the amazing quality, abundance, size and affordability of food here. I bought two heeeuuuuge salmon fillets for NZD $5 each. That’s £2. I hate it when people do this exchange rate break down convert thing so I’ll stop, but I gotta tell ya, you don’t have to be rich to eat like a king here.

Oh, and petrol is currently $1.63 (72p) a litre, and diesel is $1.00 (44p) a litre. Right, I’m stopping now!

Well, apart from having the outline of a traditional maori ‘moko’ tattoo cut into my chin, there really isn’t much more to report until next time.

Dad arrived today, back from Koh Samui, but I haven’t seen him yet as Caleb picked him up from the airport and he is recharging his batteries. Really looking forward to seeing my Daddy again tomorrow. We’re planning and barbeque at Caleb and Nicki’s house tomorrow evening. I’m so eager I’ve already made dim sum.

Okay, that’s it. Goodnight people of my imagination. Is anyone actually reading this? I will probably dream about that in about ten minutes.
x

Huge news here in Somerfield, Christchurch. We have been privy to a vocabulary hat trick! Yep, Charlie was feeling verbose today and decided to share three new words with me!

At breakfast time he pointed to my eye and said (yes, you guessed it) “eye”. I went ballistic with praise so much so that I wonder whether he thought I was telling him off. But he decided to blitzkreig and move on to “ear”. Aw, so proud.

Mealtimes are obviously the catalyst, as at dinner, he came out with “more” for the first time. Perhaps it’s the borrowed retro highchair.

Nursery for two hours this morning while Mummy went to the gym. After lunch we met up with Nana after having a coffee.

This is how a coffee should look. This particular brew is a flat white ‘bowl’ and OMG it’s awesome.

This is Charlie’s first masterpiece. Created at nursery.

This is Charlie on his new wheely bug “Tiger”. He growls at Tiger “GRRRRRR!!”. Don’t be fooled by Charlie perched confidently on Tiger. He is a) not comfortable on it, and b) cannot propel Tiger along the floor without being pushed. Charlie has come up with his own technique which involves kneeling in front of Tiger, holding on the handlebars and pushing Tiger along in reverse walking on his knees. If you stop him and try to plonk him on top of Tiger a tantrum ensues. In his own time….

And now for some surreal toy photos:

Little Dude.

It’s still really cold here and windy, but we’re starting to see a few glimpses of sunshine.

I feel the cold much more here as there’s no boiler to crank up as the mercury sinks. I’ve had my electric blanket on!

Caleb and Nicki are camping up in the alps this weekend. They’re still covered in snow so good luck to them!

That’s it from us for now. Speak soon. xxxx

For a while I thought that perhaps I might build up the concept of coming home. Perhaps I was romanticising the whole notion; remembering only the rose-tinted glimpses of few and far between half-dream/half-realities. Should I steel myself to have my glasses whisked promptly and brusquely from my face, to watch them thrown in a muddy concrete gutter and stomped on by someone wearing grey vinyl shoes?

When our plane started descending not a moment too soon towards Christchurch International Airport, I felt a warmth envelop me without even looking out the window (difficult anyway from seat 37D which is in the middle column).

When I was young my Nana (who was so outrageously fun and kooky when we were children, she was almost like a female Willy Wonker) would drive us out to the airport and we would pretend that we were flying off somewhere on holiday. This may well sound dull, but this was in the late 70s/early 80s and the airport was the stuff of movies, very glam, it even smelt different from anywhere else I’d ever been. Caleb and I loved the arrivals and departures boards. No boring TV screens back then. We’re talking the black background with yellow lettering boards that constantly clattered, changing details, sounding like really important dominoes falling from 30,000 feet.

There were two ‘cafes’ and a souvineer shop. There was an ‘observation deck’. It was huge. Last Friday as we were about to land I noticed that the airport seemed to be surrounded by fields. As the plane descended to approximately 50m I noticed there was only one runway and it was surrounded by grass, and parked next to it was an old Bedford water tanker that looked like it was a prop from some 1950s film. The big International airport, the terminal that linked us with places like Madagascar or Casablanca or Club Med was suddenly a country cousin, a toy airport, something quaint.

Ah, but it was still my airport. Learned off by heart from pre-school to now. From little domestic flights down to Dunedin to see cousins, to ‘unaccompanied minor’ jaunts up to the North Island as a 10 year old, this airport is almost synonomous with ‘home’. And if it’s still playing Donkey Kong II and doesn’t have a Wii Fit Board, well that’s okay with me.

Mum had prepared as only she could, and had the car seat, high chair, a toy box, and even a big bowl of jelly ready to go.

Nana is a natural with Charlie and keeps him entertained with her slightly off the wall sense of humour.

Mum’s been great, and has made life so easy for Charlie and I. She has rolled up her sleeves and got down to the nitty gritty (or “nutty grutty” in my new kiwi accent), taking command of bath time, feeding, nappy changes and lots of walking practice.

Charlie has been going to a local nursery for an hour or two every day and he is getting a lot out of it. During this time I’ve been going to the gym. I need to as I’ve mysteriously gained 3kg.

Oh – the cloud finally broke yesterday and we finally enjoyed some sunshine. Back to cloud again today though, ho hum.

We made it. There were times when I thought we wouldn’t (because I had been arrested, or Charlie had been removed from the plane by parachute). Times when I thought my watch had stopped as I counted down the hours and minutes until our Christchurch ETA, watching the Flight Path on the big screen, watching the “Time Until Destination 9hrs 49mins” change to “9hrs 48mins” as Charlie continued to scream uncontrollably. Tick tock.

But before Charlie once again transmogrified into ‘Chucky’, we did share some happy times together on our whirlwind tour of Singapore which I will share with you.

Lunch at the Peninsula Hotel’s cafe.

Look at my gorgeous date!

Unfortunately he was on one of his regular hunger strikes and didn’t fancy papaya and watermelon, so with a bread roll wrapped in a paper napkin we headed out into the 33 degree midday heat of Singapore‘s Colonial District to do a quick reccy before we had to head back to the airport.

A walk around Boat Quay

Typically the busiest establishment was the English Pub at the end.

It really was very hot and I was worried about Charlie, so we didn’t hang around. Suffice to say it was an interesting blend of lush greenery, imposing high rise banking establishments and beautiful colonial architecture. Oh, and of course no chewing gum or litter ANYWHERE. I was looking for anything at all, a cigarette butt, a wrapper, a bottle top… I didn’t see anything.

Raffles Hotel

The highlight of our day was visiting Raffles Hotel. It is such a lush, tranquil oasis in the middle of a bustling city. I wished we had more time to spend there, but we took some photos, bought the t-shirt and rushed back to our hotel…. well almost….

Once inside I felt like I was in a colonial plantation somewhere, or that I had gone back in time and was in British India. It was beautiful, elegant, peaceful and I want to stay there!

Apparently no trip to Singapore is complete without partaking in the
famous Raffles Singapore Sling so Charlie and I headed to the Long Bar,
where the cocktail was created in 1910.

It was quite delicious. But at $24 you’d really want it to be. I liked drinking it. I made hundreds of these cocktails in my bar tending youth and have to admit it was worth it for the warm feeling it gave me to be drinking it at the source. Or it could’ve been the gin.

The dark wood-paneled bar is kept as it was in the early 1900s. There are bamboo fans attached to a mechanism on the ceiling to keep the room breezy. It’s really quite quirky and I loved it.

Boxes of peanuts (monkey nuts) are scooped out of large hessian sacks for every table. The etiquette is to crack open the shells, eat the peanuts and drop the shells on the tiled floor. It’s a strange sight to see upon arrival, until you get the gist of what’s going on.

Luke – you would’ve loved it! And I don’t know how they do it, (boil them?) but the peanuts inside are salty!

So that was Singapore in 120 minutes! After that we packed up, checked out and waited for the ghastly minivan to take us back to Changi Airport for the final leg of our journey.

Surely this time he would sleep wouldn’t he? Wouldn’t he?????

No, it wasn’t to be. He stood up in his bassinet in front of
the entire cabin and tapped the central TV screen with a metal teaspoon whilst shouting. If asked (or made) to sit down, or worse still lie down, he would cry and scream in protest. He was hyperactive the whole way to Christchurch. I knew it was getting bad when one of the ultra-attentive and tolerant flight attendants asked Charlie to be quiet.

Things not to pack in future when flying with Charlie:
– Book
– Crossword Book
– Laptop and USB cable
– Notepad and pen for diary writing
– Eyemask for use whilst sleeping
– iPod
– Games

I’ve heard it said that one’s experience of a time span is relative. I have to agree. Especially when that relative is an 18 month old, the time span is 12 hours, and the son about whom you have previously worried “is he sleeping too much” opts not to sleep at all.

Well, he slept for an hour between 11pm and 12am.

Of course, during this time I opted to watch a film, thinking that Charlie would sleep for a further six or seven hours post-film. When it finished I switched off the screen, pulled my blanket up to my chin, closed my eyes and…. Charlie woke up and cried for the remaining seven hours.

Singapore Airlines were very good, but nothing could really make up for the fact that I felt like I was being tortured.

By the way, I watched a movie called ‘District 9’ and it was very funny (although classified ‘Action’). It was about an alien craft that arrived and hovered above Johannesburg (Independence Day style). Eventually a refugee camp is made for the 1.8 million aliens (or “prawns” as they’re derogatorily referred to by the humans), which disintegrates into a slum. The Nigerians are of course exploiting the poor ‘prawns’ by selling them overpriced tins of cat food to eat. The Afrikaans are rounding them up into smaller ghettos and hollering at them at gunpoint. It all seemed a bit too close for comfort.

I looked dishevelled and slightly mad when we arrived in Singapore. My skin looked like sandpaper, and I could’ve been mistook for someone who tested shampoos in a lab by the state of my eyeballs.

Charlie was mildly delirious and the only thing that he seemed capable of doing with any verve was producing noxious smelling poo, which meant I had to wheel him in his buggy whilst juggling my suitcase, rucksack, handbag, changing bag, overcoat and additional bag of ‘extras’ the cabin crew had thoughtfully thrown at me into the loos at Changi three times to change nappies.

After reporting to the ‘Singapore Stopover’ desk, I was made to wear a little round sticker and await my transfer to the hotel. Eventually some guy who looked like he was fresh (well actually he wasn’t that fresh at all…) out of Hawaii 5-0 with his tropical print short sleeved shirt and aviators, rounded up the straggling bunch of losers of which I was one, and led us to a rather sorry looking minibus. There weren’t enough seats for all of us so we were pretty much sitting on top of one another (quite literally for Charlie of course) as we cruised through Singapore’s humid 32 degree afternoon in what should more appropriately have been a family van, with no air conditioning.

We arrived at the Peninsula Excelsior hotel just as the last strand of Charlie’s hair was glued with sweat to his over heated little head.

After what felt like the longest 24 hours of my life we finally arrived in our room, dumped the bags and collapsed onto the bed when the sound of a pneumatic drill and sledge-hammering from NEXT DOOR broke the reverie. Agghhh!

Yep, they’re renovating that part of the hotel. Luckily I was so desperate I turned into the Terminator and demanded not only a room change but a whole ‘tower’ change which set the minions a-scurry across the foyer in a desperate attempt to pacify the deranged mother who was about to pull an AK-47 out of her ‘Islington Recyling’ cotton nappy bag and open fire.

So we made it into our room. No excavation sounds – hurrah! The room is nice and has everything we need. I drew the curtains to shut out the stunning bright blue day and dove straight into bed. We slept for four hours, waking up very disconcerted and confused with the local time being 9.30pm.

Charlie and I spruced up with a bath, got dressed and prepared to head out. I called the operator to find out what was open and was surprised to learn that everything was shutting for the evening. We got out of our Singapore ‘Nite Scene’ clothes and got back into our pyjamas and ordered room service. This was enjoyed by mother and son whilst watching ‘Singapore Idol’ followed by ‘America’s Got Talent’.

One thing I thought was a bit odd: when I was on the phone to Room Service I asked them if they had bananas so I could give one to Charlie. They said “only for banana smoothies”. Hmmm. Too weak to argue.

It’s now 1.30am and Charlie has only just fallen asleep.

I swear I can smell poo. But it could be wafting up from the typically too small for purpose bin under the desk which is now home to another two feral brown nuggets. But enough of poo for now.

http://files.me.com/tejadafleur/9t0cep.mov