Friday, 8 March 2013
Brisbane Central > Brunswick Street > Helensvale > Southport
With one down and four to go, Friday was always going to be about tidying up and transiting. The tidying, once everything had been stowed into the backpack and the Little Red Travelling Bag, involved Part Two of the TUH Dental Affair, a subject we'll draw a discreet veil over since no one out there really wants to know, and then relocating myself and gear to The Unit at Southport, where a load of washing will be needing to get done, before I catch the one o'clock flight from Coolangatta to Sydney.
The dental appointment isn't till 1:40 this afternoon, so the game plan (he types while sitting upstairs at The Rothbury) involves checking out, figuring what to do with the LRTB and wandering downtown to kill time before an early lunch. There's a Translink information booth in the Queen Street Mall that needs a visit so I can get the right ticket to go Central > Brunswick Street > Helensvale > Southport by way of a mixture of train and bus transport, and I figure there'll also be an early lunch before the visit to the fang farrier. There's also a new live Incredible String Band album that might have lobbed in Rocking Horse Records, though I'm not sure I want to head in there carrying the LRTB.
All, of course, will be revealed in the fullness of time.
Having successfully negotiated my way through the dental ordeal it was a case of wandering down to Brunswick Street Station, popping into the chemist for the suggested painkillers and making my way, by way of the ticket office down to Platform 1 and the train to the Gold Coast. I hadn't quite been able to get the free WiFi to work in on the way in from the Airport, but the morning's session over breakfast suggested I needed to start by opening Safari and clicking on an I agree button, which I duly did and duly found it worked.
With the In tray cleared I spent the rest of the hour and a bit long trip going back through the email that has managed to accumulate on the iPad, deleting some things that needed to be deleted and filing whatever needed to be filed into the relevant folder.
The bus to Sea World synchronizes nicely with the train arrivals and delivers passengers into downtown Southport, and it was around a quarter to five when I let myself into The Unit, expecting The Nephew wouldn't be home.
He was, and we spent the next half hour or so discussing various maintenance issues before moving onto other matters. Dinner took the form of takeaway pad Thai from the Noodle Bar, which sat conveniently opposite a First Choice liquor outlet. Frankland River Riesling over dinner, further discussion and the laundry through washer and dryer and Hughesy retired for the night as a reasonably happy camper.
Reasonably, that is, due to the fact that things needed to be ironed in the morning.