The House Husband

If you’re ever in a position of choice between taking the tube from Embankment or walking across Waterloo Bridge, I’d always choose the latter. At least that’s what I thought before today. Sadly, this is no longer true. My newest aphorism is “if in doubt, catch the Tube”.

I’d seen the weather report so cannot plead ignorance. Even sitting in the restaurant where Mirinda and I had Italian for lunch, the rain was heavy enough for me to see it without my glasses. Did I heed the warning of Apollo or hear the glee of Thor? Not a bit!

We had a lovely lunch in a new place (for us). The thing about the location of Mirinda’s office is that there are enough restaurants within a lunchtime radius that we will probably never run out of a new one every Wednesday. We wander, Mirinda spots somewhere, we eat. Brilliant strategy.

I would normally have a Fiorentina pizza in an Italian place but the special salmon in a lime, coriander and butter sauce was too good to pass up. Apart from the calorific content (about the weight of an adult yak) it was perfect. I guess that really means it tasted great but was very, very bad. Too bad, I say! In all senses.

Earlier in the day (before I left home) I realised that someone had stolen my umbrella. Given that the last time I saw it was hanging from a hook by the front door, it could only be one of three and I’m pretty sure the poodles would have difficulty working the opening mechanism.

As I looked out from the restaurant window, smiling at the poor tourists running from shelter to shelter and the lunchtime workers battling against the wind with their oversized golf umbrellas, I remembered I didn’t have mine anymore.

Normally I’m rather reticent when it comes to umbrellas. I think they are dangerous and pretty useless when there’s even a puff of wind. However, it’s always nice to know there’s one in my bag if I’m ever caught up in a drench emergency. Like today.

After lunch, the rain having eased off to the faintest of faint drips, I walked Mirinda back to her office and then set off back to Waterloo. I stood at a metaphoric crossroads in Embankment Park. Left to Waterloo Bridge or right to Embankment Tube. Stupidly, I turned left.

15 minutes later I was standing in front of the platform indicators in Waterloo concourse, soaking wet with no-one to blame but myself. Never mind, I thought glumly, the train will be announced shortly and I can strip off my wet outer garments and be relatively comfortable. Well, as comfortable as you can be on a South West Trains 450 carriage.

The announcements at Waterloo station are terrible. It’s not a language or accent thing because generally the announcer has clear diction and an easy to understand accent. The problem with the public address system at Waterloo Station is one of pitch. A voice needs to be of a certain tone otherwise any long information will become indecipherable.

For instance, today the train was delayed for some reason – it said so on the indicator board – and some bright spark figured it would be a good idea to let us know why. The message sounded a little something like this:

For those passengers waiting for the 13:23 train to Alton this train gmbld nmukl grmmb drddldrd grmp dmp dmp [this actually went on for ages but you get the idea] very shortly.

I’d like someone to tell me why that was necessary. It wasn’t just me, there were plenty of other passengers looking completely mystified, some asking other people what had been said and getting only shrugs in reply.

Anyway, eventually the indicator changed and I boarded the train on platform 11 (where a train had been sitting all the time I’d been waiting) and, apart from leaving a few minutes late, had an uneventful trip home.

Here’s one of the only decent photos I took today. It features Embankment Pier where Mirinda catches her ferry (one very similar to the one in the shot) and, if you look carefully, you can see her building.

Embankment Pier

I sat at my PC last night, eager to make my blog entry about my journey home. It was about 10pm. Mirinda was fast asleep (still getting to grips with her jet lag) and the house was quiet. I typed a couple of sentences then realised I’d fallen asleep as my head hit the keyboard. I decided to go to bed.

After about ten hours sleep, I was alert and ready for the day. It was cold, the sky was very blue, it was lovely. The poodles went mad when I went downstairs – something I’ve seriously missed.

I stood at the kitchen window, waiting for the kettle and realised just how terrible the back garden looked. Mirinda had described it in a text to me as resembling the desolation of Smaug. She wasn’t wrong. It looked unloved, uncared for and unpleasant.

After discussing the plans for the day, we eventually went up to Farnham for a coffee at Cote Brasserie. The park looked grey and dull but I loved it. The day had also gone from blue to grey but this didn’t matter at all. Everywhere around us was the smell of rotting vegetation.

This is one of the smells which I remember from when we first arrived, late in February. It is strongest out in the country, wandering the lanes, across the empty fields. It is the result of vegetation rotting in waterlogged fields, of cows and horses fertilising fields, of the British countryside. I love the earthy naturalness of it. And now, it smells like home.

Walking the poodles around the park, we stood and looked out at the misty, greyness and Mirinda commented how anyone who’d seen us a week ago, bathed in sunlight and warmth, would wonder why we were glad to be home. I don’t. I love being home.

I’m just adding this photograph because I like it. Mum took it the day I left. It shows me just back from the pool.

Swimsuit Gaz

Christmas eve and the rain hasn’t stopped. Dad had to go into the hospital today so the hospital could do what they needed to do, and I was to be left in charge of the house. Denise turned up bright and early and whisked them off.

Trace then turned up to take me shopping for mum & dad’s Christmas present part 2. Before she turned up, and following orders from mum, I put out her towels to dry. The sky was grey in patches but there was also plenty of wind and sun. I figured it would dry before it rained. It just shows how incredibly silly I can be sometimes.

We were in the car, just about to cross the Kawana Island bridge and the rain came down a-teeming. Trace also had washing on her line so we both sighed.

There is a ridiculous amount of rain around Queensland this year (and elsewhere in Australia). The news is full of floods, stranded cars, kids surfing in their back gardens and the usual tale of woe about how this woman’s house was flooded two years ago and took months to dry out and now it’s happened again. Well, der. You live by the river, you flood by the river. So I always say, anyway.

Now I don’t mind a bit of rain – I wouldn’t live in England if I didn’t – but this is ridiculous. It’s not your nice, friendly, mild-mannered English drizzle. Oh no! This is torrential, get soaked just from looking through the window type rain.

In fact, this afternoon, mum and I popped into the Kawana shopping centre so I could logon and perform some very important online stuff on a public terminal and, while it was fine when we went in, it was pouring when we came out. The drops were so big we were drenched from head to toe after about three feet. Mum had my umbrella but that was as useful as a wheelbarrow on an iceberg.

Rain. Mum and dad actually decided to move to Australia 50 years ago because they were sick of it always raining on their holidays. And that was nice gentle English rain.

Which reminds me, in an entirely different weather related vein. Trace had a call from Mitchell (her youngest who is presently in Norwich) in the early hours of this morning telling her how it’s started raining in Norfolk and the snow is vanishing. He now has the wonderful slush to look forward to. Lucky boy. Though he did say they are predicting a white Christmas. And I get rain. And humidity.

So the towels have had about 28 rinses while hanging around on the washing line. Just as they are almost dry, the rain decides they could do with another soaking. Pointless. Wish mum had a dryer. Not that she’d use it.

Here’s the sad old towels after their umpteenth rinse, looking a bit sorry for themselves.

Well rinsed washing

Also, I thought this next shot would show how awful the day is but it didn’t quite work. Still, the trees look like they’re suffering a bit.

Trees at the edge of a Queensland cyclone

I needed to mow the lawn before I went off to the high seas. I remember standing at the back door on the Friday morning thinking just that. As the rain fell. My mower doesn’t particularly like wet grass. it gets all clogged and refuses to move unless I brush its teeth every ten feet. Anyway, suffice to say, I didn’t mow the lawn.

I should have mowed the lawn as soon as I returned (well, the next day actually as I arrived home after 9pm) but it was raining and I couldn’t. We have had one day without rain this week and I spent it waiting for the BT guy at the Canary Wharf flat!

It is still raining as I type this on Thursday night. I can hear it lashing the windows. Plus Day-z just trotted up beside me for a pat and she’s wet.

Work tomorrow – the first time for what seems an age.