Sunday was 29C, can you believe, and we’ve still got two weeks before winter ends and spring begins. Truly the weather is bonkers, but in Sydney at least, beautiful.
Anyway, it was a super day to go to a party, so I did. Yes, yes, of course it was a kids’ party – you don’t seriously think I have time to go to an adult one, do you?
The thing is, pretty much every weekend either Three or Six is going to a birthday party. I tell you, they go to more events than Paris Hilton.
This one was for one of the girls at Six’s school. Her parents own this house on a high plateau looking out in all directions to the horizon. It sits on 10 acres and it is blissful
For the party they’d hired a couple of those bouncy castle things which cost about the GDP of Botswana for an afternoon but let me tell you it’s well worth it because you can sit in an easy chair on the lawn with the mothers and look across Australia in the sunlight with a soft breeze in your face while the kids laugh and scream.
The father of the girl took me on a tour of the estate and pointed out a big wooden white house over yonder. It seems that when the blocks of land were sold, deer were still running around all over the place. The bloke’s wife liked them and started feeding them but if you know anything about deer you’ll know they will eat all your plants, and trample the ones they don’t find tasty. The upshot was that Mr White House got some deer hunters in to do a cull, you know, as you do.
Thing was, the birthday girl’s father – who is a top bloke who built his own house – knew nothing about this until high velocity bullets started whizzing across the valley and in one case embedded themselves in his chicken coop (no eggs that week, apparently).
Of course, thinking a madman was on the loose he called the cops who sent a swat squad around, or whatever they’re called these days. Seems the bloke in the White House who'd ordered the hit on the deer was a lawyer from Sydney (two things that just don’t play well in this neck of the woods, let me tell you) and threatened all kinds of legal reprisals, because the boys in blue had been called.
“There’s no doubt, he’s a very clever bloke,” said birthday girl’s father as we looked across the valley at his gleaming house. “But also very stupid,” I said.
He clapped me on the back and said, “You’re not wrong. Now, how are you on the barby?”
Apparently, though he can build a house, no problem, the barby is something of a challenge to him. I’ve never met an Aussie bloke who doesn’t claim to be a whizz with the tongs and a hot flame, but his wife told me he’d never successfully cooked anything without either poisoning people or half burning the house down.
So, I ended up cooking sausages, steak, chicken, lamb and a rack of ribs for all the starving children and parents.
Yes, of course it was well done, I don’t do medium and I definitely don’t do rare.