The Birthday Party

We had such a lovely time at the birthday party.

But before we could go, we had a task to perform.

It was our duty to supervise the baking of the birthday cake.  The small birthday cake.  The small birthday cake, duplicated 80 times.  We had our Human actually do the baking, closely instructed and supervised by us.  And she did a not too bad job.  Grandfather Tony seemed pleased, anyway.

We went to visit him on his actual birthday, taking with us an appropriate present.  We all went out for dinner and then came back for celebratory port and cheese.  Then we repaired to our beds for a good long rest, before the actual party itself.

The party was a great success. Lots of people came.  The sun shone.  There was lots of lovely food.  There was wine and beer.  There were lots and lots and lots of balloons.  And, of course, the cakes.  Which were much admired by everyone.  And Grandfather Tony had a really lovely time and smiled a lot.  And wore his birthday hat which we had carefully brought with us from England, just for the occasion.  

It was a lovely day and well worth the trip.  I wonder if he could be persuaded to have another party next year ...  You'll find more of our photos on our album here

Sydney

We've been having a lovely time in Sydney.  We've stayed in the most beautiful apartment overlooking Circular Quay, where we could see ferries and little boats and things.  And we could see this too:

Sleepy thought we should move out of the apartment immediately, and go and get a cabin on the very classy ship.  Alas, we didn't have a ticket.  And we did have the apartment.  So it wasn't really practical.

So we went out and about on the ferries instead.  We went to Manly to play on the beach and eat chips.  We went to Darling Harbour to eat more chips.  We wandered through the Botanic Gardens and found another beautiful boat

Unfortunately, we didn't have tickets for this one either!

So we walked a lot and admired a lot and played a lot.  And then we went to watch the Queen Mary sail out of the harbour.  We waited and we waited and we waited and we waited.  The ship didn't move.  So we waited and we waited and we waited some more.  And still it didn't move.  We wondered if someone should go and show them where the reverse lever was!!

Then it started to move.  Slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly.  It backed around out of the bay it was in.  It backed slowly into the harbout.  It backed and it backed and it backed and it backed.  It was heading, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly - straight towards the harbour bridge!!!!!!!  If it didn't stop soon, it was going to take out the harbour bridge.

Wait.  Where's Sleepy?  Has anyone seen him?  He was the one who said they needed to be shown where the reverse lever was.  SLEEPY!!!!!  Let go of the reverse lever RIGHT NOW THIS VERY MINUTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Phew. The ship has stopped.  The bridge is safe.  Sleepy says it wasn't him.  He was having a nice, quiet sleep in the bottom of the Big Red Bag.  Hmmmmmmm.  We're not so sure about that.  We think we had better take him back to Melbourne forthwith, before he gets up to any more mischief.

Visiting Victoria

We have come to Melbourne for a birthday party at the end of the month.  but it seemed a very long ay to come just for a birthday party, keen though we are on partying, so we decided to extend the party season and come a little earlier.

And we've been having a lovely time.  We've been to the Melbourne Zoo to admire the new seal pool and to greet the baby elephants and juvenile tigers.  We would have called on our relatives the pygmy hippos, but they seem to have gone on holiday somewhere.  In any event, their pool is being pool-sat by some rather large fishies.  So we greeted them and wandered on.

We have been eating remarkably well.  We've had food and wine in streetside cafes, in pubs and in coffee shops (coffee, rather than wine in the coffee shops, of course).  We've stayed in a penthouse flat in East Melbourne and are now in a beach house on the Mornington Peninsula. We've been on trams and walked lots and lots (although to be fair, we've had the humans doing the walking and we've hitched along in our travel bag).  And the weather has been lovely.  No need at all to wear the new jumper that Grandmother Stella has knitted for Bernard (although I think that she might have really knitted it for an orphaned penguin; she seems to be knitting lots of jumpers for orphaned penguins on Phillip Island).

And there has been lots of time to play.  There is still another week before the party, so even more time to play is in prospect.

Click here to see our photo album