Girl in the Cafe

Sunday 27th September 2009
Geelong won the final final yesterday, apparently it was a good game played in bad weather conditions, but as we couldn’t see it until four hours after it had finished, we didn’t bother, so don’t know if they were telling the truth or not.
It was a nice day today, the weather was good with a top temperature of 25C and hardly a cloud in the sky.
Ian went out for a bike ride this morning, he left a bit later than he had wanted to but after checking out a map, headed for Dunsborough using the little used country roads.
The problem with reading maps in this country is that everything looks as close as it was in England, it is a concept that we are having great difficulty coming to terms with, and Ian was reminded of that fact today.
When Ian checked out the map before leaving we couldn’t see a road name for the road that would take him into Dunsborough, but we could see that it was the turning after Quindalup Siding so shouldn’t be a problem, Wrong!
When Ian got to Vasse he saw our local Speed Camera operator sitting in his car trying to catch the tourists speeding, so he stopped for a chat.
The Speed Camera Operator had a better map than ours and he proceeded to tell Ian where to turn off onto the unnamed road, now whether Ian got a bit confused by looking at his map and directions and remembering our own map, or he just had a senior moment remains open to debate, but he managed to miss the turnoff totally, not only did he manage to miss that turnoff but he missed the one after as well.
Ian thinks the problem was that the two turnings after Quindalup Siding were both on a minor incline, and as Ian was already feeling knackered by this point he probably had his head down, peddling for all he was worth in a desperate effort to finish before he ran out of steam.
At this point of course he would have done well to take note of that saying “more speed less haste” or was it “more haste less speed”, he can’t remember, but he knows what it means because every adult he ever met when he was a kid seemed to say it to him, but he didn’t and ended going to Dunsborough the long painful way.
Whilst still about 8km outside Dunsborough Ian was running out of water, which was a bit worrying as it is very easy out here to be a hundred miles from anywhere that might be able to let you have some water, combined with the fact that Mobile Phone signals can only be received in town, we don’t have a satellite phone and if we did Ian reckons the satellite wouldn’t fit on the crossbar anyway, and Carolyn didn’t have a clue where he was because neither did Ian, so couldn’t come to his rescue.
Fortunately he found a winery that hadn’t converted all its water to wine yet, he can’t remember the name of it, but it was something Woods and had a girt big wooden troll type statue, work of art, whatever you want to call it, in the driveway.
The lady that served him seemed to think that he must be mad cycling as far as he had but she filled his water bottles there and that was enough to help him finish the journey, he did promise to go back and try some wine next time so that will be another arduous task that we shall have to take on another day.
When Ian got to Dunsborough he chained his bike to a dustbin and parked himself in a chair outside our favourite breakfast café, Artizen, he ordered a coffee and then rang Carolyn to get her to come and pick him up.
After a while Carolyn arrived and we both had coffee and cake, it’s amazing how civilized it feels to relax in the sun with coffee, cake and no kids, so we took our time over it.
When we had finished we got into Carolyns car and drove home following the same route that Ian had ridden, the dustman hadn’t been by the time we left so we put Ians bike in the car as well and brought that back with us.
Ian had ridden about 46km which is about 30 miles, so he’s still got a lot of practice to do before he takes on Busselton to Augusta, but 30 miles was the minimum he used to ride on a training ride in the UK so it’s not a bad starting point after two years of very little riding.
The weather today has been so good that the kids have had their slip and slide game out which involves them sliding down a sheet of wet plastic, they had their water pistols which now resemble bazookas out and between them and their mates that had come round to play, got totally soaked.
The kids had to go to bed early tonight after packing all their gear for camping with the Scouts tomorrow, so it wasn’t very early by the time they went to bed because they couldn’t find anything that they were supposed to take with them, apparently this is a worldwide phenomenon and we aren’t the only people with kids who are so desperate to take part in these events that they can’t find anything that might make the stress and trauma of getting everything together just a little bit easier on the parents, if they could find their socks in the sock drawer it would be a start, pants in the pants drawer that sort of thing, but know they are so wrapped up in taking part they can’t possibly take part in the boring bit at the beginning and no doubt will not want to take part in the boring bit at the end when it all has to be cleaned and accounted for.
After the kids went to bed we watched a film called The Girl in the Café with Bill Nighy, we had never heard of it before but Bill Nighy stuff is normally pretty good and so we risked it for a biscuit.
It won’t go down as one of the best films ever made and it has very political overtones, but for a political film it was very watchable and we thoroughly enjoyed it.
We had a call from one of the staff today, she has got to go back home to see family and won’t be available for a couple of weeks, sods law as it is the school holidays and we are expecting to be busy.