Getting accustomed to Adelaide

Today was largely unexceptional - we spent the day at the house with Cherie's Mum and Grandmother. (respectively known as Mimi and Gigi to Annie and Michael) whilst Paul and Cherie were out all day at BAE inductions to prepare them for living in Saudi. The day passed pretty much without incident, except when I overheard Cherie's Mum saying to Chrisitina something along the lines of 'you girls are so slim - that other one is chubbier than you though I think. Don't tell her I said that'. Way to conduct yourself in a small bungalow ! Eh well, I refused to take her shallowness to heart, as a) in the stereotypically old lady fashion she seems to thrive on commenting on everyone's weight, practically on the hour, so technically I guess it wasn't personal, and b), being 'chubbier' than Christina, who is exceptionally tiny (she doesn't eat evening meals, and eats hardly anything during the day either) is tantamount to being 'normal' sized.

I spent much of the day feeling rather useless - Christina is so organised she continually has everything under control, and even when I try to help I usually end up doing things wrongly (i.e. not her way) - but things picked up a bit when Mimi gathered mandarins from the tree outside for us to eat (I was pretty excited to eat fruit straight of the tree that I'd previously only seen in supermarket-organised form), and with the arrival of Paul's brother Hugh, his wife Mel, and Angus, the largest -headed baby I've ever seen. The main attraction of their arrival was the obvious tension that soon developed between Christina and Mel, the latter of whom was pretty awful in terms of her apparent belief that being extended family qualified her to treat Christina and me as slaves (not to the extent that she asked us to do stuff for her, just was pretty brusque to the 'help', and left a trail of mess everywhere she and Angus went).

Anyway, tomorrow brings another, hopefully more exciting day!

A xx