Well, here we are, back from Adelaide… The plane actually made excellent time on the return leg – we actually landed a full 25 (twenty-five!) minutes ahead of schedule, thanks to some helpful tail winds and a somewhat over-zealous pilot 🙂 But I’m getting ahead of myself! 🙂 We had our alarm set for 6.10am 
and it was still a mad scramble to be ready on time to pick up my favourite eldest daughter and her husband on our way to the airport. Then we got lost on the way there! It’s been literally years since Julian went to the airport via the South Eastern Carpark, and “routes have changed, Barbie!” (to borrow from an ancient computer game!) We ended up going all the way over the Westgate Bridge, and then all the way back again over the Westgate Bridge – but we managed to get to the airport before the plane took off without us 🙂 We rendezvoused with my favourite youngest daughter and her husband at the airport and had a good flight over to Adelaide. Julian and I flew Business Class, while they went “cattle”… Do you know, it has to be (Winter starts counting on her fingers…) oh… a good “XX” years? (yes, double figures – but if I tell you exactly how many years it’s been, you’ll work out how old I am, and I can’t have that! 😉 ) so… it’s been “XX” years since I’ve been able to sit in any sort of aeroplane seat, and not only not need an extension for the seat belt, but to actually have at least 8 inches of excess seat belt left over! It was fantastic! And I would even have fitted fairly comfortably into a “cattle class” seat, too! 🙂 I guess all this losing weight business does have its advantages! Arriving in Adelaide, we caught a taxi to the house – this time we took Kate and Terry – Lee and Neale hired a car for the day. There were quite a number of people already there, so we mingled and made polite small-talk and had a cup of coffee while we waited for the cars to take us to the church arrived. (As promised, what we all wore! 😉 ) I wore the black slacks I bought yesterday, and the new red top – I must have looked alright because several people remarked on how “elegant” I looked (I don’t think that anyone, ever, has referred to me as being “elegant“! S’truth! What’s the world coming to, if I can look “elegant”! 🙂 ) Lee wore black jeans, a black shirt, and a gorgeous brown and gold paisley tie, and Neale wore black pants, a black shirt, and a charcoal coloured tie. Kate wore a black top, and a very lovely full black skirt with palm-of-your-hand sized white leaves on it, and Terry looked very smart in charcoal/dark grey, with a nicely contrasting sky-blue tie. Julian wore his brown slacks, with a matching sport’s coat, a light-grey/off-blue shirt, and a soft mauve tie.
The funeral was a funeral. Enough said.
Afterwards there was pink champagne, tea and/or coffee in the hall behind the church – it was extremely well catered, too, with wafer-thin cucumber sandwiches, as well as mixed sandwiches. Beautifully crafted “petit fours” (read: teeny little cakes of different shapes, all beautifully and fancifully decorated!) and some absolutely darling little apple and cheddar quiches – none of which I could eat of course, but everyone who did said that they were quite delicious! 😦 And as they didn’t have any skinny milk (or equivalent) I was left with a choice of black coffee, or black tea. I opted for the black coffee, as it was quite decent plunger coffee 🙂
We only just got back to the airport in the nick of time! Because I was using one of the airport’s wheelchairs, the cabin crew on-loaded us first (and off-loaded us last!) so by the time we’d arrived at security, they were paging us at the gate! But, security had to be appeased, so we gritted our teeth and smiled tightly at them as they patted me down and used a mirror on a stick to search for bombs planted underneath the wheelchair! Then we almost galloped down the ramp to the door of the plane… and then we flew home! 🙂
Back in Melbourne, I was absolutely kicking myself (or I would have been if I hadn’t been sitting in an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weenie airport wheelchair freezing to death!) for not thinking this morning as we were leaving… that by the time we got back to Melbourne, at night… in the dark… it was going to be as cold as hell is hot! My favourite eldest daughter and her husband, and I… sat in the freezing cold with our teeth chattering while Julian went and fetched the car from the car park! I would have killed for a cup of hot coffee, or a scarf… or a thick jumper… Anyway, we didn’t die of hypothermia because Julian arrived with the car, and we drove home, dropping Lee and Neale off on our way 🙂
After we staggered inside (we were both totally exhausted!) our first priority was coffee! Then Julian fed Flipper, and then he made my soup… He’d already eaten on the plane, to save cooking time when we got home – wasn’t that clever of him! 🙂
Weigh-in this morning. Was! Not! Good! Nononononono! It was very bad! I went up three points! Up! Three whole points! That’s only two points off half a kilo! If I wasn’t depressed about it before I wrote about it, I’m depressed now! 😦 Only another five days on these wretched pills…
So there it is – a very short blog tonight because I keep on drifting off to sleep, and I still have to do my Minions! 🙂 Tomorrow, we’ll probably spend the day getting Mandreth up to level 65, and on Monday, the painters start pulling out nails, screws and brackets from the walls, plastering up the resulting holes and sanding them back before doing the painting proper, which should take a couple of days. And of course, Julian has to start assembling all those Ikea flat-packs! Whatever happens, do call back again tomorrow night to see how things are progressing on the weight front, the Rift front, and the unpacking of the boxes front! Until then though, please try to bee good, don’t forget that even if you fall on your face, you’re still moving forward, and always remember to keep warm, to look after yourselves, and to drive carefully – but most importantly, remember to stay safe! 🙂 ciao, all! 🙂
My Word! 