say hello to my little friend

Sending a shout out to my Dad. Hope you're reading mate, not been having a lot of luck calling you. Anyway, today we got up and Mara and I came up with a load of things to do right away. The day would start with breakfast at Pancakes at the Rocks, then we'd head to see the massive flower and then we'd go see Andrew Denton's movie God On My Side and if we get a chance we could go watch the pro volleyball at Manly. Scratch that, not enough time. Would have been worth looking on the internet to see if Pancakes was open on a Sunday morning as we may have found out that it is not, currently, open at all. Bugger. So we headed to the Quay and had pancakes and loads of bacon at CQ Cafe. It looked like a dodgy hole but the food and coffee were good and we were set.

Did not get far towards the Dendy before the girls found a clothing shop with a sale on, so I headed and got the tickets, they looked at clothes, I got bored and wandered into the Botanical gardens to see how much of a queue there was for the plant. Not much of a queue and while waiting I spotted (well, someone else did) a cute lizard. A few grown ups inched close but not too close to take pics, then slowly backed away. A couple of kids wandered right up and the critter hardly budged at all. Hmm. Should have been bolder and would have got some better shots. Ah well.

The girls - who had not bought anything - joined me and we wandered in to look at and smell the Titan. The flower is certainly very large, but not as large as I had expected and, probably because we were there early in the day and not in the evening it did not stink like a corpse as I hoped it would. Nevermind. Up close it does pong a bit though. Apparently it starts as a tuber, grows into a massive leaf, dies back, does the same and then when it has enough energy stored up it flowers. A real huge flower. That stnks like a corpse. And insects love that. And the flower lasts a few days and then it starts all over again. The flowering one we saw is about 6yrs old and they flower every couple of years, typically. Here endeth the lesson.

It was then back to the Dendy at Circular Quay for the movie. Another one of those documentary affairs, this one focussing on the Christians in the US media. Worth a look. And it gave me the oportunity to have a choc top. Do not look that up in the Urban Dictionary. A choc top is an ice cream cone of very average vanilla ice cream topped with chocolate. They are typically so firm you can knock nails in with them. And so it was with this one. Only this one also had a mutant chunk of choc coated ice cream hanging out of the side, sort of the John Carey Merrick of choc tops. Marvellous.

Day went on to be a run around the park, for not-a-change, and then a look on the internet for kayaks. I fancy a spot of kayaking soon.