Top Gear Live...

Today really feels like a day of mourning here in Australia. The death toll from the bushfires keeps rising (currently 76, and 700 homes completely destroyed) and hundreds, if not thousands, of our countrymen will get no sleep tonight as they try to protect their property and their lives.

Those of us who are safe are feeling helpless. A quick tour through many of my favourite blogs shows that this issue is first in all our minds. I guess all we can do right now is donate money or clothes / bedding / toys, and ensure that we don't waste a drop of water... so that all possible can be directed towards the bushfires.

As well as sorrow and helplessness, I'm also feeling a rage so deep that it has not reached the surface yet. These fires were lit intentionally. It's unfathomable. Unspeakable.

We in Sydney have had our 40+ degree weekend this weekend. And while most people were travelling from the hotter inland western suburbs to the cooler eastern and northern beaches, my boys and I travelled in the exact opposite direction. Our behaviour was SO unusual today, that we had practically the entire train to ourselves.

So... we sweated our way west.......


... until we reached nirvana.

Oh yes, we went to the "Top Gear Live" performance! Nirvana for a boy about to turn 12 AND for his brother and his Mum. It's absolutely our favourite telly programme and when we heard that they were coming to Australia, we just couldn't resist.

It was hot.

And a big part of the experience was walking around looking at sexy cars that cost more than most houses. In the heat.

Formula One vehicle and fans!

And then we went inside into the bliss of the airconditioning... to our nosebleed seats, two rows from the top.


... for an exciting show filled with gasoline, testoterone, inappropriate sexual inuendo and a finale of car-soccer!

It was fun. Exhausting but fun.

And then we struggled with 90 minutes of non-airconditioned trains to get home.

"Mum! Look! An Alien must have been murdered there!! Green Blood!"