We arrived in Canberra on a Saturday and the first thing I did was take Tim to see the Captain Marvel movie as I had been telling him that we would see it when we got to the next place with a cinema. It was a ten minute drive down to the Belconnen Westfield. Everything in Canberra is ten minutes drive away except the Airport which is fifteen minutes away. The whole place is a funny series of circular roads that don’t seem to pass any houses. It’s a bit like one of those round mazes only instead of some sort of prize being in the middle, it’s a building full of scared short sighted politicians. I never quite knew where I was. Luckily google did.

Next day I took Tim to the airport so he could be there when his classmates arrived for their four night trip. He was so excited that he was doing rollie pollies on the big round lounges down at the arrivals area. When they finally arrived he went all mumbly and silly AND so were his mates, even though they were so excited to be seeing each other. I guess in 11 year old boy world huggy wuggies and saying lame stuff like ‘It’s great to see you’ is worse than eating barbecued mouse droppings.

I went to visit my friend Govinder who owns a pub in Belconnen. A good catch up and we sorted out a couple of issues he had with his taps by drinking beer (problem solvers).

We spent the next few days going to all the usual Canberra haunts like the national __________ (fill in the space with the public edifice of choice).

The caravan park was very neat, tidy and organised. We made friends with a few of the local crimson rosellas.

I managed to have lunch with my old mate Llara. Lou and I went to visit her at the Canberra Uni where she works a lab manager and got to see some lizards, turtles and frogs. They do ecology work there and I wonder if Lou, with her love of animals might not end up doing something like that. She is already slowly investigating just how many animals you can cuddle and how long you can cuddle them, before they’ve had enough.

On the Thursday arvo I went to airport to pick up a very happy Tim who was bubbling over with joy about the wonderful time he’d had with the school friends. All reports were positive and the happy glow has remained with him for a while.

So for a city visit we did well. It was a bit chilly (6 degrees one morning) and I wore shoes and actual pants (rather than trackies) for the whole trip (classy).