Christmas At The Aquarium

-

We decided to rewrite our Christmas traditions given that it was only us and BD this year and none of us felt like doing lots of cooking and we already did our presents with Secret Santa a couple of days ago.

In theory I slept in. In practice we both got up, had first breakfast, walked the dog, picked up the dog poo, did a load of washing and a spot of pool maintenance all before BD texted us to say she was up and we could come over to have brunch/second breakfast and start Christmas proper.

Christmas morning walks.  Dog refusing to pose for the camera.
 
Second breakfast.  Or first lunch.
 

One Christmas movie and a plateful of pancakes later we jumped on the train and headed in to town. The trains were all free on Christmas Day, which means it's theoretically possible to pack a picnic and travel the trains all day but we hadn't thought of that in time so we used the train in the conventional manner, just to get in to town.

Empty streets at the train station.

Sun sparkled on the water and Christmas picnickers clustered in the shade as we wandered along the river to the Aquarium.

Melbourne City wished us and the picnickers a Merry Christmas.

The elevated railway provided welcome shade from the midday sun,

and the Aquarium was right where it was meant to be.

We went to the Aquarium because we thought that everyone else would be at home sleeping off Christmas lunch and us clever people would have the place to ourselves. Unfortunately a lot of other clever people had the same idea so the place was packed, but we had a good time anyway.

We saw clown fish in anenome castles,

jellyfish lolling about doing jellyfish things,
and dancing jellyfish dances.

Of course jellyfish weren't the only interesting things at the Aquarium.  We were steadfastly ignored by the Emperor penguins,

the sea-horses, the Murray cod,

the tree-snake, and a frog.

Eventually we popped, blinking, out into the bright afternoon sunshine and caught the train back to BD's house for more food, more Christmas movies, and some serious cat cuddling.


Where's my present then?

By the time we got back to our place Cobwebs had convinced herself that she had been abandoned forever and was thus so delighted at our return that she forgave us for smelling traitorously of cat. Feeling suitably guilty we gave in, set thoughts of The Diet aside, and handed out bedtime treats before going to bed to dream of dancing jellyfish.

I hope that wherever it was and however you spent it, your Christmas day was a good one too.

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

23/12/21 The Dinosaurs of Newtown

-
Image
Some time in the months before Christmas, somewhere near Newtown, a shop had a sale of inflatable Christmas dinosaurs. Lots of people thought that a large inflatable dinosaur was just what they needed for their 2021 outdoor festive decor, so they bought the dinosaurs and then discovered that, once inflated, they were very big. Not as big as a real dinosaur would have been, obviously, but certainly big enough to be inconvenient if you happen to live in a trendy little terrace house with a handkerchief of front lawn and second story verandah almost the size of half a vegemite sandwich.   Dinosaur #1: taking up all the available verandah space I imagine that at this stage the dinosaur purchasers may have considered the size of the dinosaur (inflated or otherwise) in relation to their rubbish bin, but were likely prevented from this course of action by children who, enamoured of dinosaurs, had welcomed the creature into the Christmas fold and called it something festive like Rudolph, o...
Read more

Minor Adventures on Quiet Days

-
Image
 Roger took himself off on the train to South Australia for a week, so BD and I decided to have some adventures of our own, albeit not as exciting as riding the interstate train to Adelaide and getting to have an up-close stickybeak at the flooded Murray River. We took ourselves off to the Ormond Lookout to watch the sun set instead. As did rather more people than what we had anticipated. Mobs, in fact. We found a patch of dirt grass and settled in.  "I'm gonna come back here!" declared BD.  She wriggled around a bit: our patch of grass was on quite a slope and she kept sliding out of her shorts.  "With a chair," she added. In between admiring other people's dogs and taking observational lessons in 101 Ways To Take A Selfie, we watched the sun trundle slowly toward the horizon. No sunset is complete without a picnic. There she goes. Further down the beach, a container ship puttered across the horizon under the gaze of a lone beach-sitter.  And us, of course...
Read more

Quiet Life with Cat

-
Image
 After all the excitement of hospital stays, Emergency Department visits, and trying to balance the cost-benefit ratio of hospital cafeteria food, life became a little more settled.  After a week of blessedly boring drug levels BD was given a reprieve from daily blood tests and we, therefore, were released from daily drives to the nearest Melbourne Pathology lab.  We did some laundry and did some cleaning and I hopped on my bicycle and went for a ride or two.  Not that the weather was very conducive to enjoyable and relaxing bike riding, but I went anyway. All was fine at Albert Park, where the swans put on a good show, playing happy families all across the playing fields.  But that didn't last for long. Back at home the new cat let his crazy out to play.  He zoomed up and down the hallway in the middle of the night; scared the bejeebers out of us by jumping on the sound bar and blasting us with high volume TV; hid under chairs and batted at our ankles as w...
Read more