I suppose we all have those funny days where everything goes right, where the sun shines, where the company is just right, and the beer is icy cold.

Last Friday started off right for me when I stepped out of the shower, and the kitten stepped into it.  She made a pretty show of delicately shaking a few drops of water off her little paws, while temptation built in me.  No, I mustn’t.  Yes, I must.  A woman’s gotta do what a woman’s gotta do, I thought, and turned the cold shower back on.  Exit one soaked cat, dripping all the way, at warp speed.

This was our Mandurah trip day, officially a visit to our publisher, but we treated that as secondary to the real purpose of the day, having fun!

Beryl was the first to arrive, bringing me a gift, a calendar full of naked women.  Well, I said it was a funny kind of day!

Tony arrived shortly thereafter, with June and Cathy, and we set off for Mandurah.  Forty-five non-stop-chat minutes later, we parked on the waterfront for morning tea, where we astounded Tony with our organisation skills.  Looking at the selection of cake, tea and coffee with separate containers of both milk and sugar, I think he was being a little facetious when he asked if we even had a teaspoon, but we floored him by offering him a choice of two!  Then followed visits to the public toilets, in batches, which set the tone for the rest of the day. 

After a productive hour with our publisher Dave Bowen, we went hunting lunch.

We ran down our prey at a place called Kingswest, right on the waterfront.  For $9.80 we bought the right to eat all we could, and we were well up to the challenge.  I think we managed an average of four courses each, including multiple desserts, followed by coffee.  Visits to the toilets in pairs occurred during the meal, and we realised that Tony was getting the hang of things when he announced that he was going to visit the toilet, and did anybody else want to come along!

Lots of club business was discussed, and controversial ideas were raised and shot down, voices rose, but tempers didn’t, and the day continued in a harmonious manner.  That is until we tried to find the Miami Tavern, which had been one of the inducements we had used to persuade Tony to tag along with a bunch of women.

Either the tavern had heard us coming and had hidden itself in self-preservation, or our navigators were already drunk, so we had to abandon that project.  Instead Tony took us to an English pub in the middle of nowhere, where Tony had the divil of a time getting his gums around a Guinness.  The barman was still hooking up the barrel to the pipes, or whatever the technical term is, and he had to wait for a while.  Tony used this waiting time to good advantage by convincing June and Beryl that because we were in an English pub, they refused to serve an Irishman.  We grabbed June just before she found a shillelagh to take to the barmaid, and made her aware of Tony’s blarney.  If she’d found the shillelagh, she’d have turned it on Tony!

The rest of the journey home was pretty uneventful, though very talkative, and I swear I distinctively heard a sigh of relief as Tony dropped Beryl and I off at my place!

Roll on the next trip!

P.S.  Oh yes, the book is coming along well, and if Dave can swing a good deal for us, we can have two hundred copies, with 180 pages plus a glossy cover in colour, some time during February.