Dust storm

Sydney was blanketed in a dust storm today. Alice slept in, but I was up at 6am, running about the house excitedly, taking photos.

View from the kitchen at 6.15am - it would usually be light already.

Alice finally woke up to join in the fun, so here is her room's "sea view" at 7.30am

By 9am, you could make out the surrounding suburb from the kitchen. It was around this time that it stopped being fun. The advice was for all children under 5 to stay indoors with all windows closed, all day, and Alice and I were already tearing our hair out, not to mention each others. It was absolutely boiling (it was 30 degrees yesterday and the heat had built up in the house. Usually we have a sea breeze, but didn't fancy the 60mph winds and the dust they were carrying wafting through the house) and we had already exhausted the tea set, the Maisy DVDs and the new old toy - the tunnel (Me: "Where's Alice? I can't see her anywhere. Is she at the park?" Alice (giggling so that tunnel shakes): "Yes").

We popped to Bondi Junction in our now orange car (that doesn't count as going outdoors, surely) but that was even hotter because they couldn't have the air-conditioning on but did have all the lights on and a million other people there with the same idea, so we purchased an indoor-day-essential: an "In the Night Garden" DVD, and hurried home.

The afternoon was spent eating our lunches while pretending to be asleep (great new game), baking cheesey cat-shaped biscuits (went better than last time - Alice still got bored halfway through but didn't break anything) and playing shop. I set Alice up on a stool with her cash register and a bag to pack the goodies (we were playing Australian shops where the assistant does it for you). We got a few things out of the kitchen cupboards and I bought everything in the shop at least 25 times. I haven't seen her have so much fun since the last time she saw a cat.

It's a great shop. Everything costs "two" and the total for any combination of items is nearly always "two" (although bizarrely once it was "thirty". You give her any amount of money and you get "two taynge" (two change).

The skies cleared mid afternoon and before I learned that the pollution still was about 3 million times the usual level we ventured out to the beach. Even the sea had a reddish tinge. Apparently about 75,000 tonnes of dust were being blown into the ocean every hour last night and this morning and it's going all the way to the glaciers in New Zealand. Unbelievable.

Alice has told me, "Daddy work" hundreds of times today. Each time, I agreed and told her that Mummy and Alice were "at home". I didn't like to point out that today here has been quite hard work too - it seems a bit churlish. Here is the evidence of poor Daddy's tough day at the office and how the poor lamb lost his view for the morning...

Then, when the skies cleared, he went back to the grindstone in the difficult environment that is the view from his desk.