A day out

At long last a day out. We decided to take the small children beach fishing and packed the car up after they had gone to bed on Saturday, that would be about midnight....shades of Christmas eve there. They could smell something in the air.

Bright and early (all right early) on Sunday we set off for the beach with at least twenty small children in the back of the car. Well it sounded like it, oh for one of those glass partitions they have in limos!

#1 was hungover, at least he was transparent from lack of sleep and #3 decided he would find out where we were going soon enough if he went to sleep and we woke him on arrival. He is so chilled out I don't know how he ever stands up.

Of course #4 climbed into the back and knotted the fishing lines, opened the packet of frozen squid lips and found the knife, all the while with me writhing in the front seat trying to reach him with my shoe to clock him one. Good look for passing motorists.

I had carefully packed two towels, Homer said they wouldn't be swimmimg, why bother...I ask myself , "Has he met our children?" I left him to dress them, more on that mistake later.

" Are we there yet? are we there yet?"...." Not yet, we haven't left the drive yet."

We drove south for an hour, through lovely tropical scenery to the sounds of snoring (#1 and #3) and " Are we there yet?, What's this? can I...ow!,why is this slimy? this smells funny, ha-ha it sticks to the window, look!" with me responding with "Put that down, if I could reach you, put that down!" Interestingly all this accompanied by the BBC world service, because local radio stops as soon as you drive south of Cairns.

We arrived at the beach, carefully selected for its gently sloping sands and small surf. Number 3 took off like a rocket and straight into the water fully dressed, that's underpants, pants, t-shirt and thick woolly jumper. I dragged him out and stripped him off to his underpants, all the while giving meaningful looks to Homer, to be greeted with " What, what?"

I spread his clothes on the sand to dry and half-nelsoned #4 on his way to the water, sitting on him until I had him stripped off, only to discover he was going commando. More meaningful looks at Homer. "What, what?"

You could spot the local family on the beach, that's us dressed in jeans and jumpers, the tourists are sunbathing.

The rods were untangled and the squid lips applied to hooks and I rested reading a book in calm and tranquil surroundings, only broken by the screams of my children in the water. These I could ignore, after all it's not my house they're trashing.

The fishing led to number 1 catching a log, some sea weed and a couple of crabs. He's really embarrassed that I keep saying he caught crabs because he thinks I don't know what the other crabs are, so I keep saying it. I may say it to his boss tomorrow, #1 caught crabs at the weekend.....

I did take pictures but am tecnologically challenged and will await Homer uploading, downloading whatever it is.