Jon and I are nearing 30 and should be responsible adults by now. You’d think we would be capable of conducting a babysitting evening in a mature and responsible manner, but when my sister and her family came out to Sydney, they soon realised that we still had a long way to go…

Many people are of the opinion that it is foolhardy to take small children on a long haul flight half way across the world, but my sister has proved them all wrong by taking her husband AND 2 small children on the 24 hour flight to Australia with no problem whatsoever. Having been away for 7 months now it was a massive treat to see my family, and we had a week together in Sydney before they went off to Cairns. We spent the time seeing sights, enjoying beaches, throwing the odd boomerang around and doing a spot of babysitting.

The hotel apartment they were staying in had all mod cons including a kitchen, and Jon decided to cook toad-in-the-hole. For those who have lived in rented accommodation or hotels, you will know that smoke alarms are very sensitive to sausages and toast and thus before we knew it there was a godawful beeping/screaming sound throughout the apartment.

A hotel employee immediately came to establish what the nature of our fire was and left us to it, but the alarm continued to squeal. Soon, the squeal stopped, to be replaced by a voice saying, “please evacuate the building” over and over. I really thought I would look out over the balcony to see a herd of hotel guests amassing in the streets, but no such luck. What I DID see were 3 fire engines pulling up and lots of firemen getting out.

6 of these firemen then walked up the 7 flights of stairs to the apartment and queued at the door as I told them in a near-hysterical voice that “it was just sausages!” I had actually begun to find the whole thing rather amusing by this point and the hysteria was borne out of excitement at seeing the lovely Aussie firemen in all their gear at the door.

The dinner turned out to be tasty (even if the yorkshire pudding looked as if it had been run over) and Gill and Martin saw the funny side of the whole affair when they returned. I know it is a terrible thing to waste a fireman’s time, but I am completely unable to feel any remorse since I got such a great eyefull of all those hunky men. Will I ever grow up!?