Bouuh

Boo! I scared you. Marie, flatmate of our nanny Margaux.

Since we got back home, we've had French nannies to pick up the boys. We had a choice of sending them to French school at Killarney Heights. This is around 10kms away. Both boys seemed too young to put them on a one hour bus ride. Plus they'd lose half their leisure time. With the nanny they can keep up the language and spend more time playing.

We've had a few really great ones: Solange from the Cote D'Azur, Lea from Avignon, and now Margaux from Paris. Solange ended up staying at our place for a couple of weeks even, since her host family ended up with the parents divorced, awkward. Normally, the boys will stay at school for about an hour of running around at "Stay and Play." Then coming home, they do homework, or play board games speaking French the whole time. They try to speak English to me, but I refuse to do anything until the question comes in French. Then they say they can't remember how to say it, so I tell them to ask Margaux. It's great for them to get used to all these different people.

Louis Charlie and Ollie at the bowlo.

A night at Petersham bowling club 29th April, checking out how cool the whole place is. This is the night before the auction. Can't remember why we decided to do that, but it was persuasive: this club has a lot of charm. Heaps of kids running around having a good time, beer, pizza, what more could you want from an area? Don't know if we were hung over or what, but after some frantic bidding, seems we won the place at Palace St around the corner the following day.

Vonnie and Tony at Petersham bowls.

At first the bidding was slow. I looked to Marie for each bid, to see if she wanted to go higher, and each time the answer was yes. It got to a point where it seemed we had it. Then they went in to consult the buyer, who said yes to the current bid. The agent announced "The vendor has told us we've reached the reserve. This property is going to be sold. All bids can get it. So who wants it?" Some mystery bidder then started in. I didn't really see him, as I was looking at the auctioneer. He bid furious and quickly. Each bid we put down, he put it down straight away. So it went up another 100 in the span of seconds. I think he thought he had it after the break, and the fact we were taking our sweet time with each bid. But the psych trick did not work, as we were prepared to go up more. Suddenly he hung his head and slunk off with his family, which is when I noticed he had two kids, and we both felt kind of guilty that we'd robbed him. "That guy really had his heart set on it, ha ha!!" said Tony later. Oh well. "Going once, going twice, going three times. Sold!!" said the agent pretty quickly. I think he actually wanted to get it to us without dragging it on, or taking any more from anyone else. I think he was happy to have 2 confident bidders and wanted to give us this help.

At Barangaroo, the Macquarie Bank building.

Inside we met the vendors, both nice people, who were planning on downsizing. "We thought it would go for less!" to which we answered "We thought it would go for more!" They answered "Well then we can both be happy!" The agents read through the contracts, all signed on, handed over Tony's bank cheque, and that was that.

This area is begging for some skateboarding.

Seems like we went down to Barangaroo for the day on Sunday. The boys had a great time jumping on the building areas as you can see in the shots.

Max's birthday at John and Julie's

Max's birthday was around this time. We went over to John and Julie's. A good time and too much food.

And it was a really packed town hall. Lots of interest.

Went to a town hall info meeting about WestConnex at Paddington Hall. I proudly wore my Stop WestConnex t-shirt, and met Andrew the head of StopWestconnex Errskinville. He's a maths teacher so he knows it doesn't add up.

Albo addresses the crowd.

We have a problem with congestion in Sydney. It's been there since the 60s when we discovered driving cars were more convenient. The tram lines got ripped up, and all money was ploughed into road making. Trouble is, every study shows, that adding space for cars adds exactly the same proportion of extra car trips. This project costs $17bn. Adding enough buses to triple the government fleet of Sydney and Newcastle would cost $4bn, allowing $1million per bus. To resolve congestion we need solutions that take people out of cars, not add car trips to this already overrun city. Not to mention the air pollution, and the fact that global warming is already kicking in hard. Basing transport on vehicles that burn oil is not a good move.