MOTHER'S DAY

Today was Mother's Day in Australia, and turns out it's quite a big thing here - there have been numerous news stories based around the exciting exploits of Mums and so on. On this occasion - with quit a lot of Mums in the extended family, everyone was coming over the the Chettle's house for a big Barbecue. My first Aussie Barbie! As there were so many people (all of us, Hugh, Mel and Angus, Damien and Chris, plus Cherie's Mum and Grandmother, the Beatties from yesterday, and numerous assorted Aunts and cousins etc) most of whom brought food with them, there wasn't that much to do in the kitchen, or that much space to do it in. I decided to attempt to be helpful by putting some things in the wash. The machine, despite being a top-loading one, all seemed pretty straight-forward, so I loaded it up - mostly with Annie and Michael's things, and various cleaning cloths, put in some washing powder, and switched it on.

20 minutes later, I happened to go into the laundry room, only to find, horrifyingly, a huge mass of soap bubbles coming out of the drain bit in the floor, in hilariously cheesy film-mishap fashion. I turned the machine off, mopped up the bubbles, and tried to work out where things had gone so wrong, whilst also alternating between turning the machine back on (which, whatever setting I put it on, resulted in more foam coming from the floor) and desperately hand-rinsing out the stuff in the machine so that no one would think I was the incompetent domestically-challenged fool that I actually am. After the conclusion of that panic, I had to run the gauntlet of further meetings with the insane old ladies that seem to make up Cherie's extended family. this time Hamish's mother - so Alicia's paternal Grandmother, who accosted me with a hundred questions, without introducing herself, and then proceeded to tell me the dangers of hiring someone to look children without a CRB check (I placated her by telling her I'd had one for my last job, rather than by pointing out their fallaciousness).

The rest of the day was quite nice - there was a plethora of food on offer (disappointingly only one dessert, and flan-based at that) and in the evening I discovered that both Paul and Cherie were lapsed Catholics, and I went with them and Chris, to the local Chuch, where we met Cherie's Grandmother (who is a v. vigilant Catholic, and had already been to Mass that morning too). It was quite a nice, modern Church, and I was surprised to find exactly how similar the Mass was to Mass in the UK (curiosity about this was probably the main thing compelling me to go). We then drove Cherie's Grandmother back to her place to get her settled (bypassing the priest on the way out, who, bizarrely, had the most enormous dog I'd ever seen - I think it was a Newfoundland - greeting parishoners with him) and I saw lots of hilarious old photos of Cherie (including a spookily portentious one of a teenage Cherie holding a baby - I think a cousin or something - who looked exactly like Michael).

All in all a good, but exhausting day. Goodnight!

A xx