Sunday sweaty Sunday

God put mothers on Earth to drive their daughters up the wall. It is not their only mission in life, perhaps; but it has to be one of the more relished and influential.

Against all my instincts, including but not limited to phobias of crowds / direct sunlight / 'mainstream' events, I mustered enough enthusiasm to plan an excursion to the Air Race with mum and N. Sadly though not surprisingly the Park 'n' Ride was full, and there was no way we could drive there in time, so I let them take the shuttle in without me, assuming they would call when ready to be picked up.

But does mum ever: remember to take the mobile with her; use a pay-phone; not make impromptu unilateral alterations to a pre-agreed itinerary; think that her elder daughter just *might* worry sick if she and her younger daughter remain incommunicado hours after they were scheduled to arrive home???? If you guessed 'yes' to any of the above then you have more faith in her than I do.

Granted, I am not the most rational person beyond pedantry. There is no verifiable reason to question her ability to utilise public transport or to look out for herself and N in this globablly speaking extremely safe lil town. And she does this (finding her way home, complete with the last-minute changes-of-plan and the incommunicado) often enough that maybe a totally sane and unrelated (a tautology really; one cannot be at once totally sane and related to me) person ought not be at all fazed.

But does any of that give me one smidgeon of peace of mind? By 7pm I was contemplating the mechanics of filing missing person's reports and explaining to dad how I'd misplaced a large chunk of his immediate family. Fortunately for the local police and for dad, at 7.15 the two heartbreakers casually strolled in, shopping bags in hand, having spent the rest of the afternoon in the city.

Alongside all that drama, my get-fit-for-trip plan stays on track with a massive workout today. After being rejected by the Park 'n' Ride a flash of spectacular-even-by-my-standards stupidity overcame me, causing me to:

1. crawl with the traffic into Sth Pth, only to find parking an hour later and several post codes away; then
2. try to locate my phoneless intended co-showgoers on the foreshore (yeah that worked great).

Combined effect of 1. and 2. was me walking from UBD page 373 D8 to page 372 D5 and back, in the pre-summer mugginess, no sunscreen, no water, in my ageing chafing flip-flops (nobody says 'flip-flops' in this neck o' the woods, I know; but had I written 'thongs' instead it might've been misinterpreted), for over 3 hours.

In the evening the Albanyan and I made enchiladas and asparagas salad, and life returned to its optimal rocking state.