I'd done quite a bit of preparation for Audrey's birthday - from making the horse cake, to preparing 'Frog in a Pond' (blue jelly with a jelly frog at the bottom). The plan was to have a 'Pony Party' at the riding school where Audrey learns to ride.
On Saturday Canberra's weather had been glorious. The last chills of our (long) winter seemed to be disappearing. I'd sat outside without a jacket and things had looked rosy.
On Sunday morning (the day of Audrey's party) I'd checked the weather and noticed that they were forecasting a 70% chance of rain in the afternoon. The weather forecasts in Australia tend to be remarkably accurate. There's not so much 'chance of showers' which is the line almost every UK forecast trots out with annoying regularity. I guess the size and scale of the country allows forecasters to see fronts appearing more clearly.
It was dry all morning but then as we drove to the riding school (car boot full of precariously balanced party food) it started to rain. By the time we'd driven the 15 minutes out of town to the centre it was bucketing it down and by the times we were at the car park for the riding school the rain had turned to a frosty mix of rain and sleet.
After speaking to the staff along with a slightly crestfallen Audrey we decided to cancel the riding. I quickly googled films showing that afternoon, but unfortunately there was a range of 'contains violence' movies. Eventually I found Dendy in the city had a series of Ghibli films showing. They're anime Japanese films (mostly) for kids. We've seen a couple and they're good (albeit weird at times) so we headed there as an alternative.
Sure enough the film was weird (and loooong) but everyone feasted on popcorn and Fanta and we got to sing and cut the cake at the end so it was all ok. We'll do the horse riding another time, perhaps in a few weeks when the chance of snow(!) has passed.
 |
| The birthday crew |
 |
| the cake |
No comments:
Post a Comment