On the first evening, a Sunday, I went with the nippers to reception and said, "Hello, can you tell me how to get to the restaurant?"
"Oh, yes," she said, "it's just down the corridor and first right."
When I got there it was closed. It's always closed on Sundays. It says so on the sign on the door.
"The restaurant is closed on Sundays," I said to the girl on reception.
She looked at me with a frown and said, "I know that."

They had another venue (restaurant would be too grand a word) which promised a buffet and as much as you can eat for the not insubstantial fee of $40 per person. One thing you know about places that say, 'all you can eat' is that the management know you'll take a couple of bites and you won't.

We went on the dolphin cruise on a storm-tossed day (there were no other days to choose from...) and I asked the captain - a young boy of 19 - how it was out there in the bay.
"There's a bit of swell, a bit of roll," he said, "but nothing too much."
I managed to hold on to Four as we 'rolled' but Two got away from me and next thing I knew he was sitting on a woman's lap. She was as surprised as him, but then she was in the loo at the time.
We saw plenty of dolphins, I have to say. They seemed to be laughing. Sometimes the ship rolled so close to them I could have had a quick snog, but I'd promised myself I'd never kiss another animal again (yes Tracey, I do mean you).

Nelson Bay has a great sweep of beach - white sand, beautiful clear sea, and volcanoes on its edge with an assortment of rocky outcrops and misty islands - and if you go to the lighthouse keeper's cottage, built in 1825 with wide verandahs to keep it cool in the summer sun, you get a fine and unobscured view of a simply stunning bay which is five times bigger than Sydney harbour. You can stand there with the wind in your hair and look seaward just like aborigines may have done when the first European ships hove into view, their white sails no doubt looking splendid. Today, if you swivel your eyes from the majestic view you will see Basildon. Slough or Chatswood, your choice depending on your knowledge of ill-designed towns which have been built for profit and not beauty. It is a travesty that it could have been allowed.

Down in the town the biggest buildings are two bottle shops, a pub whose glaring special offer signs make you reach for the sunnies and a branch of Coles. In the town you can get anything as long as it's a version of fish and chips for a variety of prices but all cooked seemingly in the same oil which I suspect was last changed about the time that lighthouse keeper's cottage was built.

One day we ventured out to the toboggan run which is a metal track, like a chute really, out in the bush. I once went to St Moritz and stayed at The Kings Hotel (yes, of course it was an all-expenses paid trip - do you think I am made of moola?) and had the chance to go down the Cresta Run with an Olympic champion at the helm. That was fast. But not as fast as the Nelson Bay toboggan run..."It'll be harder to brake because it's wet out there," said a nervous boy who took our money.
"Right," I said and sat Four in front of me.
All I can say is, the Cresta Run is a doddle, mate, and I'm sure in time my back will heal and I'll be able to play quoits once again or bend down to pick some weeds without involuntarily letting out a sound like I'm being murdered. 

Oh sorry, I almost forgot, the big, well, the biggest news of the day in Australia, the lead on ABC news, the front page lead banner headlines in the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald - horses have got a cold.

Really, what on earth is this all about? I mean horse flu is not deadly, horse flu doesn't spread to humans. All it means is a few people with more money than they can poke a whip at cannot go out on the weekend racing their expensive ponies - well, for about eight days which is how long it takes for your horse to get flu, lie down for a while and then get better again and gallop around the paddock. A good time to take a break, I'd say, horsey people (but don't forget to wipe your feet before you jet off...).

I can of course understand the folks in Melbourne being worried - after all if there's no horse racing on Melbourne Cup day they might not be able to flounce off work for the day - but come on, that's not until November. I'll think you'll find most people/animals with flu are over it within a couple of months...

But suffice to say I am intrigued as to why the middle lane of the motorway appears to have grooves in it - how else to explain why it is travelled by morons who don't seem able to get in the slow lane on the left (I can only assume they believe the middle lane is there so you can overtake the left lane).

I'm also wondering how come a hotel can hand deliver a note each morning that says, "due to the inclement weather we will not be able to deliver your newspaper this morning" and why an Italian pizza place that promises me any topping I want doesn't have pepperoni...

So, I thought I should do something about it. Now, I don’t like the idea of diets, I prefer to opt for lifestyle instead – an all-encompassing approach to losing weight. So, I’ve decided to become a caveman, a stone-age man, a paleolithic man.

It seems that during the stone age people lived just about as long as we do now and according to the fossil records and the information gleaned from the burial sites of our ancestors, there was little or no disease. What killed stone age man was either old age or a particularly feisty mammoth. Well, I haven’t seen a mammoth for some time, so I’m counting on old age seeing me survive well into my 120s.

Okay, the stone age man regimen means that aside from donning a loin cloth (which I love to do, but then that’s another story...) I have to look at what I eat.

So I am now on the stone age man diet. This means lots of lean red meat, chicken and fish, eggs, vegetables and nuts and dried fruit, but no dairy, wheat, oats, or beans, the latter all being items stone age man will not have found either hanging on a tree or loping across the savannah.

Now one day in I am having a bit of a problem with the lack of dairy as I love cheese so I’ve decided to just have goat’s cheese if I must. Also I have about four cups of darjeeling and earl grey a day which I have to have milk in. Those caveats aside, I’m going for it like an axe thrown at a sabre-tooth.

I am a little disappointed though that the research has not shown any evidence of beer during stone age times, and apparently Coopers was not on the radar then at all, so that will be a shame, but never mind, I’m hoping I’ll soon be able to get those jeans on again, and then I can have a pint or two to celebrate.

Really, the whining never stops. I'm not going to go through all the obvious stuff again, oh well, I suppose I should - you know there is public transport in London (no, I don't mean a train service that makes the main news story every time it stops), it is not expensive if you bludgers get a job other than working in a pub in Earls Court, and I have seen it rain here too (yes, even in the summer, strangely enough).

But you know what, I'll just borrow a favourite Aussie phrase yet again (which incidentally I saw on a plumber's van again the other day - so original), "If you don't like it, you know what you can do."

What it is with people, I just don't know.

Anyway, she managed to pull herself out of the despond and go back to her younger days if you like and pull out some canvasses and look at them again and somehow rekindle her love affair with crayons and paint and ink. Last night it was a huge success; the gallery was packed and red sold stickers - at $800 to $1500 a pop - were being applied with all the gusto of the parking attendant outside the Catholic church on Sunday morning (the Lord clearly moves in mysterious ways, you God folk...). I felt so happy for her, and her parents were there too, they'd driven from somewhere out in the country and the pride fairly rippled off them. I asked the plonker husband if his wife's paintings were in the other room too and he said, "I've no idea, why don't you look, then let me know."

It may not be as silly as it sounds, after all people pay loads of money for car number plates if they're rare, and pretty much everything seems to be up for grabs these days.

Across Britain people are apparently registering loads of different names for themselves in expectation of making barrow loads of the folding stuff once the scheme kicks off. Now, I'm not sure it has legs because in most cases all you'd be buying is a style of writing which could be hard to replicate.

But, let's say you were one of those few people who are making money out their blogging, the ones like that Chinese woman who apparently has two trillion visitors a day, or something like that. They make lots of money off the Ads and sponsors they have on their sites, so I imagine that must be worth something to somebody else...

Anyway, yesterday there was this English woman dressed to the nines, as they say. Thing was, her clothes, while looking flash to the casual observer - and the nine inch heels on her boots certainly made an impression, er, I mean on the parquet floor - once examined with the eye of a connoisseur (I used to have a girlfriend who spent all my money on clothes) it was clear she was mutton dressed up as lamb.

I asked her where she came from in the UK and she looked at me like I'd asked her to remove her clothes, right there, right then, and said with an imperious stare, "A little place just outside London."
"Oh," I said, "you mean where, Dorking or Reigate maybe?"
"No, I mean a little place called Gloucester."
I laughed out loud, which caused her to look at me as if I'd shouted out fuck! in front of her infirm grandparents over the sunday roast in Bishops Cleavely.
"Gloucester's two hours from London," I said, "and that's if you have a Bentley GT which will do 202 mph and all the traffic lights are kind to you on the way."
"Well," she sniffed, " I wouldn't know, I am always helicoptered."