Day Ten: Gold Coast

Even with the early to bed, early to rise bit, the muffled drums of the dawn parade would probably have woken me as they moved from the Southport RSL to the newly relocated Cenotaph at the Broadwater Parklands. Until the relocation, one assumes the march would have taken them right past The Unit, but being half awake as the drums murmured, it probably comes as no surprise to learn that I was sitting at the table checking the email well before the actual sunrise.

Had I been at home, I'd probably have headed off to the dawn service myself, but here, with no knowledge of the local practice, total anonymity, and an uncertain interval between the march and the start of the service itself, I decided against a hurried departure.

I could, perhaps, have checked the timing of the later observance, but given the anonymity factor (you wouldn't have been expecting to see anything in the way of old acquaintances, after all), decided against going to that one as well.

Which meant, once the email was safely digested, and a morning post-dawn walk was out of the way, that it was back to tapping away, listening to the contents of the iPod via the handy little docking stereo we'd installed there back when it looked like the place required our attendance every three months, and when the tapping was done it was back to Miles and the London Underground.

Madam, armed with a bundle of Japanese texts she'd borrowed from the local library while I was jetting to Sydney, was more or less in the same mode, a situation that lasted throughout the day until it was time to reheat the risotto and throw a couple of chicken fillets in the oven for dinner.