Easter came at the perfect time for me. I was exhausted and needed a break from the 9-5. I say 9-5, I don’t think anyone in the 21stcentury works a 9-5 day. My day starts at 6am with a quick shower and breakfast, if I’m lucky I spend 10 minutes with my daughter before dashing out for the bus. I have a change to an express and then an hour or so into the city. I am at my desk for around 8 a.m. then work through until after half five. I then have another hour and a quarter commute home which gets me in the door for 7pm. I am straight upstairs to bath my daughter, give her a bottle, get her ready for bed and read her a story. I get my dinner at 8 then by the time I’ve logged on to check my emails and catch up on some work, it’s 9:30 and I’m struggling to keep my eyes open.
The weekends bring no respite as my daughter rarely sleeps past 6am. I use the weekends to catch up with washing and ironing, other household chores, some work on my fledgling home business in baby wear and some mystery shopping to help with the bills. I may even get an hour with my girlfriend.
This Easter long weekend was a welcome respite, at least from the travelling. I left work a little early on Maundy Thursday as I believe it is called. My colleagues were on at me to come for a drink with them, but I get little enough time with my family, so I jumped on the first express bus I could find going to the Northern Beaches. Unfortunately it took me nowhere near where I needed to get to and I ended up circling the headland of Elanora Heights . I eventually got to Pittwater Road and got a connection up to Mona Vale, a bustling suburb with Waratah Street (named after the New South Wales state flower, not a possum-like animal as I had thought!) is packed with busy cafes, bakeries and pizza joints. It is ten minutes walk up a steep hill to Mona Vale RSL. I don’t know anything outside Australia to compare RSLs to. RSL stands for Retired Servicemen’s League. They are a network of ex-Army, Navy and Air force clubs set up as community centres which have bars, restaurants, crèches and sports clubs. Many have sporting teams affiliated to them and are hubs of the local community, offering subsidised food and drink. Mona Vale’s is modern, clean and has terrific facilities. My girlfriend’s mothers group met there, old age pensioners meet there for coffee and social interaction daily, friends of all ages use it as a local venue and it is self-regulating; I have never heard of any trouble at our RSL. Membership is very cheap and the staff are remarkably friendly and accommodating. I even got a phone call wishing me a happy birthday and a letter later that week offering me free ice cream, a free drink and entry into the monthly birthday draw where I could win $5,000. There is a real community atmosphere and I try and get there after work on a Friday to meet the neighbours, have a beer and win a truly Australian raffle – the meat tray. These have to be seen to be believed. It costs $5 to enter and you are presented with a large plastic coloured card with twenty numbers. A lottery selects the winning numbers and the winner has to race to the tables where they select slabs of meat, sides of beef, half a chicken, platters of sausages or bowls of mince. BBQ heaven and vegetarians nightmare. Although as the recent TV ad campaign said, not eating meat is un-Australian!
I arrived at the RSL on Thursday just in time for the kids’ Easter disco with a six-foot Easter bunny leading the dancing. My 11 month old daughter was terrified, but we managed to calm her down and within minutes she was happily playing with her toys. We bought out our entry cards to the Easter draw and won an Easter egg with the first number……and the third number, and the eighth. I came home with six Easter eggs, an invite to a barbeque and the neighbourhood Easter egg hunt on Easter Sunday morning.
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