Tricia is a friend I have known my entire life. Literally! She is one year older than me, and when we were growing we lived across the road from each other. Our parents are good friends and for many years they have played cards together most Sunday nights that they were all free, and we used to laugh about their post mortems in the days following their matches. Trish would even come on our family holidays when we were kids. I moved to Melbourne to go to uni, Trish went there to live a few years afterwards and once again we could regularly see each other. She worked in the city and I travelled through each day, so we’d meet up on Friday nights for dinner and eat out somewhere. Then I moved to the other side of Melbourne, and by this stage Trish was married and soon had a son, and so we’d catch up about one Saturday a month for lunch. Then I moved to Sydney, and it again became hard to keep in touch. But it doesn’t matter, for no matter what happens in our lives we will always be friends.
Anyway, Tricia came to visit for a few days with her son Aaron, who is now 10 years old. They arrived on Saturday evening, and so yesterday we spent most of the day wandering around the city and Manly. We drove to Darling Harbour and then walked to the city and Circular Quay, stopping at the Lindt shop for some refreshments on the way. Then we caught a ferry to Manly where we had a late lunch of fish and chips. Aaron wanted to play footy on the beach and harassed Tricia to buy him a football, so we found a cheap, small squashy ball that would do, but by this time we were heading back to the ferry. So we decided to walk to the Opera House when we got back to Circular Quay, and then go to the Botanical gardens where there are lots of large grassy spaces that we thought he’d be able to play with his ball in. Unfortunately, when we got there we saw a sign saying no balls, so poor Aaron couldn’t play even there.
We went to the BBQ King for a chinese dinner which was really tasty and both Andrew and I enjoyed a lot. Unfortunately I don’t think it went down too well with 10 year old Aaron. From there it was back to the car, and a short drive home. I think everyone was exhausted after walking so far!
Tricia and Aaron were staying until Tuesday morning, so Monday night after work we all went to Gabe and Julie’s house for dinner (we took lasagne and a salad, Julie organised garlic bread and dessert) and had a great night there.
It was really wonderful to have Tricia and Aaron visit. 🙂
