One weekend to go.

The question of the moment is: will I survive Liddy's weekends?

Yesterday we picked Theo up from the hospital & took him home before heading south to the Gold Coast. Now the Gold Coast is tourist destination un numero uno, for those of you who don't know. It's bigger than the Great Barrier Reef. It's bigger than Ayers Rock or Uluru if you prefer. It's bigger than The Twelve Apostles. It crosses a state border & sprawls in a great metropolitan tangle along miles & miles of what used to be pristine surf beach. It is incredibly ugly. The skyline is jagged with skyscrapers of units crushed uncomfortably close together so Ditz was worried about them falling on her... with good reason but we won't go into that. It is a shopping mecca.

I'm not a shopaholic. For one thing I don't have any money to spend. For another even if I did have the money to spend I am unlikely to spend it on clothing. Whenever I find clothing I actually like I need to mortgage my soul in order to acquire it so I never buy anything & never own the sort of clothing I actually like. Besides, why buy clothing when you can buy books? My girls do not share my book obsession. After all, that's what libraries are for. You cannot borrow your clothing from a library. So we went shopping.

The attraction of the Gold Coast shops is the name brand outlets , meaning the clothing is cheaper. No tomatoes. I don't care what the girls put on their backs so long as it remains modest & non~offensive & there is no doubt the huge malls (we were at Pacific Fair & Australia Fair) offer much more variety ~ too much variety perhaps? We walked & we walked...& then we walked some more. We were in & out of shops like rabbits down holes. Ditz began to complain. My feet cramped & Liddy turned white. Still we walked. I started to worry because Liddy was driving & it is over an hour either way on the highway & the weather was unpredictable.

We did all this for exactly 4 shirts. Liddy bought herself a tailored flannel shirt, which looks lovely on her. Ditz, who actually really needs clothing, got 3, all in black, all lovely & long enough to come down over her hips. The child is a wanna be goth, I'm sure. One shirt has lines of music notes across it, one has buttons with music things on & one has birds...which Ditz swears she doesn't like but which everyone else tells her is a Ditz shirt & looks lovely on her. Black is slimming & Ditz is getting to an age where her size & shape are starting to worry her. There's no doubt she is going to be a big girl. She is not built along Liddy & my lines but we think she is gorgeous & tell her so but human nature being what it is Ditz envies us the racehorse build. She is Junoesque.

Liddy, who insisted on pulling into Australia Fair after we were already in the car with the mentality we were going home, sweetened the pill by giving Ditz free reign in Darryl Lee. She bought chocolates to share. I found some coffee beans coated in dark chocolate which is an indulgence of mine on the rare occasions I can find someone who sells this particular oddity. However we were tired; I was limping ( the graze is infected & doing gross things though healing.); & we lost the car!!! Levels & levels there were & Liddy in full blown panic mode hurtling up all of them with Ditz & I wailing in her wake that it was 'Back there! Back there! '

Ditz eventually made herself heard & back down we went to find the car exactly where we had left it; not stolen, not mysteriously vaporized into the nether regions, not magically moved from one level to another.

We had good travelling & Liddy did pretty well with the driving. She has learnt that nothing is unfixable. Missed a turn? Just take the next one & go round the block. Lost? Stop & investigate the refedex. She is not panicking nearly as much when things don't go exactly according to plan & this is a good thing. We were on the 6.15 boat home but not surprisingly Liddy handed me the island car keys & got me to drive us home. She likes driving but even she had had enough for one day.