125th Birthday: Irish Dancing, Salsa Lesson and Patching Things Up

I went on a first aid duty today to Forest Lodge Public School for the school's 125th anniversary, as the Duty Manager.

I arrived at Central station a bit early, so I browsed in Basement Books and purchased a cheap hardcover copy of a book by one of my favourite authors, Dick Francis. Then I caught a bus and walked down Ross St to the school.

The weather was really good for an outdoors fête-style event, but the first hour or so was spent inside the school hall, while the 2 school bands tuned up and let loose with their performances. It really made me quite nostalgic for my own band days, back in the day.

After a period wandering around, checking out the stalls, we returned to the hall to witness some Irish Dancing by some of the kids who take lessons there of a Friday afternoon/evening. This was following by a stubbed toe, which I patched up.

Feeling peckish, I healed my stomach before having another walk around the grounds. We were given a salsa demonstration before being invited to take part in a lesson in salsa basics. This was quite fun, with my St John colleague being roped into being the instructor's dance partner.

It was winding down towards the end of the day, and we had just been told by the organiser that we could leave when we got a call out to the mini-Olympics where a young girl had been jostled by some bigger lads and had grazed her knee. She required a bit of comforting from her mum, but we were able to sort out her injuries without too much trouble.

Afterwards, we took the Oxy-Viva and Heartstart back to our Divisional Superintendent, whose house is quite close by. We chatted a bit, with him warning me not to go falling in love in Europe and staying there(!). Don't know what the chances of that are. I took the bus back to Central. The Cityrail staff at the gate asked to see my card when I was asking to get through and said they really should give us tickets. I think that all the Cityrail staff really need to be told that we get to travel for free, as this is not the first time that I've had to explain that we get free travel when going to and from duties. I've never really had any trouble on the buses and I haven't needed to take a ferry anywhere, so I can't say what the staff there are like.

Tired, I fell asleep on the train. I seem to fall asleep whenever I don't have anything else to do on the train these days.

Well, I had lots of fun today, despite the slowness of events. So to come home to an ailing computer is not wonderful. Why am I the computer doctor at our place? As though I didn't have enough to do already.