I peered at the face on the screen in some confusion.
"Excuse me, do I know you?"
"I'm your Blue Mountains correspondent," replied the other with some asperity.
I cast my mind back, a vague trickle of memory pattered over the jagged rocks of my mind.
"Oh yes, that's right. Blue Mountains correspondent. Yeah." A little more seemed to be required so I followed up with an incisive question.
"Um so, how are things going up there?"
"Great," she responded with an enthusiasm so forced that I would have been suspicious if I hadn't been desperately trying to remember her name.
"What can I do for you?" as interrogations go this was rather poor but I was still trying to regain my equilibrium.
"Would you like to come up and visit for a couple of days? It's a beautiful time in the Mountains and we'd love to see you again."
Faced with such an outright lie I finally focussed my attention.
"Really?"
She nodded with a smile normally described as brittle but which in my view had progressed to "splintered".
"No ulterior motive at all?"
The smile slipped or rather disintegrated and she finally broke down and admitted that she and her husband were currently caring for their two grand children under the age of four while the parents of said infants were rather selfishly enjoying a honeymoon. Despite this revelation for some reason I agreed to make the journey to the Blue Mountains and give them another mouth to feed.
The word being the absentee stepfather of the deed it was only a few days later that I found myself on a train heading towards an idyllic weekend in the Blue Mountains with old friends. I arrived and was handed a baby which promptly screamed at me. To be fair that was my reaction as well. Once both of us had been calmed down and greetings exchanged I offloaded the terrified two year old while the elder child politely ignored my existence and ran around the house. I handed over the bottle of wine I traditionally bring to make a pretence of contributing something to the proceedings and my correspondent seized it with a desperation that made me seriously doubt if I would be drinking anything other than cordial tonight.
Once the children had been strapped into a soundproof room for the night we discussed the next days plans. I was rather surprised to learn there were next days plans.
"We'll go to a park by the lake," announced my correspondent.
"I'm not particularly interested in parks," I replied. My correspondent stared as if she had forgotten my existence. Then as if I hadn't spoken she continued,
"The kids want to feed the ducks."
"What to?" I asked.
The next day it turned out the threatened park visit wasn't an alcohol induced fever dream (I had managed to wrestle the wine bottle from my correspondent's frantic grip at some point during the evening) and some time after breakfast I, two small children that I had not the slightest legal responsibility for and my correspondent piled into a car and amid hysterical wailing that reached the heavens set out for the lake. Said lake had a children's playground on the shore which was sensibly surrounded by the type of fence that adults fondly imagine is childproof. This seemed like an excellent moment to drop the kids off for fun while I and my correspondent did literally anything else but apparently children's fun has to have adult witnesses.
Once inside the happiness compound I was assigned responsibility for the elder child, a girl of utter fearlessness who liked to run around no matter what might be in her way. My duties were to keep an eye on her and steer her away if it looked like she was about to run into something that could kill her. For a children's playground there were actually quite a few things that fitted that description and the little girl cheerfully ran towards all of them in turn. After I had collapsed gasping on the ground my correspondent relented and asked me to look after the other child, a two year old (I think) whose mobility was somewhat impaired by the fact that he was recovering from a broken leg and he stopped to wail miserably every thirty seconds or so.
Fortunately he liked daisies. He certainly ate enough of them. This kept him quiet and my duties were reduced to intervening when rocks got in among the daisies. He was quite a catholic eater and would happily chow down on the rocks if we let him. It was imparted to me that letting him was an undesirable situation. I got covered in drool fishing rocks out of his mouth while I left my correspondent to deal with the older child's penchant for high speed self harm. Just when I thought we were going to have to put daisies on the endangered species list my correspondent returned and announced that we were going to feed the ducks. This meant leaving the child protection compound and heading to the lake shore in the company of one child who would probably want to run into the water and another which would try and eat a duck if it got too close. I was assigned the potential duck eater as the one I should attempt to protect from drowning.
The duck feeding actually went well. Both children obviously liked hurling bits of bread at ducks and if the number of ducks who turned up was anything to go by so did they. They say you shouldn't feed bread to ducks but then they say a lot of things and you can't listen to all of them, especially when you have two small children in your charge and drowning them is definitely off the table (I made a discreet enquiry to my correspondent on this subject so I can speak with authority). Frankly I think the greatest danger the bread posed to the ducks was the sheer weight of it dragging them to the bottom. It is fair to say that rarely have a small group of ducks been so well fed. That's before you factor in the fact that I managed to hit a couple of ducks when tossing bread so there were probably one or two concussions as well.
That evening we listened to AC/DC and the Village People ostensibly for the entertainment of the children. The young boy liked AC/DC so much that he stopped wailing hysterically. Having heard AC/DC before I felt no obligation to follow his example. Eventually I was put to bed with a dummy and a warning that if I didn't shut up my parents would be called.
The next day we intended to go to various gardens (the Leura Garden Festival is on) but the younger of the two children expressed his opinion of this suggestion by projectile vomiting over my correspondent and by the time she had washed, changed clothes, washed him, changed his clothes and generally contemplated her life choices it was decided to take them to another park. This park had no lake but more play equipment that could hurt or possibly maim a fearless young child which who would tackle anything presented to her. It also had a busy road which the young girl took a delight in running towards just to see how long it would be before her grandfather headed her off. There were also cockatoos that looked big enough to swoop down and carry off the younger child should he irritate them.
Eventually when the adults were sufficiently exhausted to decide that the children must be tired out I was dropped at the nearest railway station and bid a fond farewell. My correspondent commented that I should come up again soon. Then we both laughed, my laugh was edged with hysteria.
