Back on the horse

OK, Luna Park wasn’t so bad, despite me progressing to the low-mood phase of my jetlag. I convinced Sprog 1 to go on some less scary rides with me (though she moaned and bitched about how lame they were) to get my adrenaline racing. I was slightly worried that telling Sprog 2 to play on the kiddie rides while Mummy had some fun might be classified as poor parenting (and an invitation to kidnappers), but I’d paid $39.95 for my bloody ticket and there are only so many times I’m prepared to straddle a wooden horse on a merry-go-round before I want to tear out clumps of my hair and scream to break the monotony. There are only four rides that don’t terrify Sprog 2 – and only a couple of intermediate ones that don’t terrify me – so I got to do lots of people watching while Sprog 1 and her cousin lined up for all the ultra-scary ones. Luna Park is a fabulous, every-walk-of-life kind of place. There are the posh families, the bogan families, the bikie families, the tourist families, the uniformly overweight families, the teen packs who’ve escaped from their families … all swarming the same few hundred square metres (and co-existing beautifully). The female teens – from all social stratas – are particularly entrancing. Their favoured fashion item is teeny-tiny shorts (not so much with the muslim crowd), no matter how chilly the weather, matched with very big, puffy, garish sneakers. The eye-makeup is a bit garish too (again, not so much with the muslims). They move as one and alternate between giggling inanely off the rides and screeching shrilly on them. I’ll have two of them in a few years time. Scary. I stuck to my carb-free diet the whole day, aside from a teeny bite of Sprog 2’s sausage roll (I know, I know, not a nutritious choice, but she was getting surly about the endless waiting for the older kids and it bought me some time). I broke my other “diet”, the no Diet Coke one, for purely for medicinal purposes, to remedy the low-mood situation. Sprog 2 was straight on my case: “You said no more Coke!”. Sorry, darling, Mummy forgot, she promises this is the last one (you’ll see her drink). At least I’m not my sister, who is on some brutal detox that only allows grilled fish and salad and bans caffeine in every form. She had a crashing headache when she came over to pick up her sprog last night and was forced to watch me chew on a nice, juicy steak. I wish I had her willpower, she lost 10kg the last time she did it. Looks fabulous. Five years younger. I’d like to lose 10kg and look five years younger, but my willpower is piss-weak.

TONIGHT’S MENU: I will attempt to recreate the grilled chicken breast meals the children devoured in Spain and declared the best chicken they’d ever tasted. I’m already having performance anxiety.