Faulty Towers, Forster and gearing up for Sydney

The past couple of days, in a lovely sugar-coated nutshell:

– the requisite 7+ hours drive from Byron to Forster was surprisingly pleasant, broken up by only a couple of tantrum-stops along the way. The kids are actually proving themselves to be very cool travellers: the offer of a lolly-pop is all it takes to tow them into line. Some might call it bribery…I call it positive reinforcement. Look out: this blog might hereby be re-christened The Tot Whisperer.

– upon our arrival in our very cute destination, I headed almost directly to the local RSL – no, not for a beer, you damn cynics – but for a gig. It was the most fun I’ve had performing in ages, in the Fawlty Towers show for Interactive Theatre, with whom I’ve been performing a fair bit lately. I play Mrs Richards, an annoying, hard-of-hearing old biddy – what a delight, if not a glimpse into my own future.

– spent much of this morning on the beach with the kiddly-winks, where our delight at showing them the wonders of the rockpools was tempered somewhat by that painstaking parental paranoia of keeping an eye out for blue-ringed octapii. I hate that.

– hung out with Joel and April (Tim’s cousin and his partner) and their two little ones for the rest of the day, alternating between conversation and preventing child-on-child-slaughter – you’ll be happy to know I succeeded, little achievement addict that I am – and finally, booked my bus ticket down to Sydney. Because, alas alack, for various reasons we have realised it will in all likelihood be more enjoyable for all if Tim and the kids hang in child-friendly beach-filled Forster for a few more days, while I rock off to Glasshouse and gig land, with all of us anticipating the end of the week when we will enjoy the most thrillingly wonderful reunion since Olivia Newton-John and John Travolta did their whole Grease reprisal. (Didn’t they?)

So tomorrow morning, 10.40am…I’m on my way. See ya in Sydney!