There’s slim pickings on the photo front this week, due to illness (Spider Boy and I) and a neck/shoulder injury (mine, not serious, but annoying, like a big fat pain in the you-know-what), but I managed to capture a few shots this week.

I had the brainwave of taking Spider Boy on a tour of a really old lighthouse on Sydney’s South Head. I think it’s only open once a year, but of course, the morning we were due to go on our pre-paid tour, the weather was looking ominous.

We drove up , parked in the next street, and the exact moment Spider Boy and I got out of the car was the exact moment the heavens opened. Not just a sprinkle – it was torrential. Now of course, being an adult, you know that once you’re in the lighthouse, you won’t be rained on, you’ll get an amazing never-before-seen view, even if it’s raining outside (maybe). And Sydney weather being what it is, the skies might have cleared by the time we’d climbed the hundred steps to the top.

A hundred steps, I thought. I was ready to tackle them, but was Spider Boy?

By now the rain was blowing sideways and coming in under our umbrellas as we began the trek up to the lighthouse. Spider Boy was crying tearlessly as his little pirate umbrella attempted to make a break from his hands. “My umbrella! Mum, I’ve changed my mind I don’t want to go, let’s get back to the car!”

“Oh come on,” I enthused, “It’ll be fine. Don’t you want to see the lighthouse and the view?”

“No, I want to get back in the car!”

He’d been so keen that morning, waking up and running into the living room chanting “We’re going to the lighthouse!”

“Oh come on, it’s only a few minutes walk, it’s just there, see, just that thing there, it’ll be dry inside! Just there!”

“No, I want to go home!”

“Ok” I agreed, “let’s go back to the car”

So we got back in the car and drove a bit closer to the lighthouse and stopped in the No Stopping zone just across the road from it.

The rain had stopped. I made a last-ditch attempt. “Are you sure you don’t want to go?”

“No! I mean, yes, I’m sure!” my little boy said.

I thought of Spider Boy trudging up those hundred steps. He was recovering* from a cold, he was probably still feeling a bit weak, maybe it was too much to expect of him. He is only six.

As we drove away I noticed a patch of blue and light in the sky over the Sydney heads. Maybe next year.

I never thought I’d be the type to be a birdwatcher, but oh, look what I’ve become. I’ve been enjoying magpies outside my window, reminding me of cool country mornings of childhood holidays. A walk across a local golf course saw me surrounded by swallows; diving, swooping, circling me and generally showing off. All I needed was Bambi and I would’ve been Snow frickin’ White (yeah, right, that’s ALL I need to become a Disney Princess). Once across the golf course there was no Bambi, just a flock of nut-cracking cockatoos.

In other exciting mediocre news, I discovered a new line of Cadbury chocolate, “Strawberries and creme”. It feels much healthier and bizarrely, like I’ve eaten less calories, when this chocolate is eaten with actual strawberries. My philosophy must work because I’ve lost 300 grams (of fat, not chocolate) in the last month. Yes, it’s a slow loss. Because that’s how I roll.

*Spider Boy’s cold that I thought he’d recovered from on lighthouse day turned into a middle-ear infection this week. Was it because he has a mother who would have him climb a lighthouse in a downpour? I am also on antibiotics for extended coughing and spluttering.  Blame it on the rain?

How was your week?