Suddenly, I looked up and it was time to come home. I was totally outraged. Where was all this time I thought there would be for strolling around the warm streets of Sydney, choosing somewhere for lunch by reading the menu in the windows? When was I going to meet people properly, or go out on the ferry to Watson's Bay?
No time to examine the huge shopping malls, and maybe find a truly sensitive, easy-to-carry Christmas present, unavailable in Ireland, suitable for all ages, which everyone would adore. Only barely time to tidy the place up, retrieve the unopened file called "Must Do while in Sydney" from the bottom of the wardrobe where it was placed on arrival. And not even three hours to go out and watch people climbing the Bridge.
Yes, that's one of the tourist attractions, apparently. I thought it was a joke, but it turns out everyone is eager to climb the harbour Bridge. They can if they pay $98 (about £40) each and fill in a medical questionnaire asserting that they aren't about to pop their clogs, and they aren't suffering from advanced vertigo. Then up they go, climb, climb. It's madly popular, and you have to wait in turn. They let groups go every 20 minutes or so. I suppose must be in case you'd be putting your hand on someone else's boots. It takes three hours to go up and come down, about 500 people a day do it, rising to 1,000 at weekends.
I didn't have binoculars, and, although I was always peering from the balcony, I could never see anyone climbing it. They might have been in the inside bit rather than hanging off the edge. But I'm 99 per cent sure it's all for real. They have advertisements for it in the paper, and corporate climbs and gift tokens for climbs. It couldn't be just a send up. I had intended to go down and look up into it properly to investigate it for you, but the time just ran out.
THERE was the usual bout of envious rage over the people who will be going into that flat, and who will be there now looking out on that dawn and wondering how to spend a Sydney Saturday. The usual wondering whether it would have been good to have gone to live in Sydney 22 years ago when we half discussed it. It's the only city in the world - apart from Dublin - where I feel instantly at home. There was the usual fruitless examination of the theory we all had then about flight. There was a widely held and serious view back in the 1970s that all this exhausting long-haul flying was going to end, we would all just fly upwards to a docking station and have a meal or a rest and then the bit of the earth we wanted would come round below and we would drop down on it, thus saving energy and fuel and everything.
For some reason it doesn't seem to have happened yet.
So, it was out to the airport to prepare for the 24-hour journey back. Now it was very comfortable - very. But somehow hard to sleep. And it was night outside the whole time which was more restful in a way. After what seemed like days, the plane got to Bangkok. Some of us unwisely looked at the route map and realised how much further there still was to go. There was only half an hour on the ground so a lot of people decided to doze on where they were and let Thai people vacuum around our feet.
A couple were having words about whether to stay or to go. The wife wanted to stay. "You have no sense of adventure," the husband complained. "Imagine not getting out to have a look at Thailand and its culture, I can't believe it." He snorted at her lack of spirit. The wife snorted back: "All right, you walk half a mile to a transit lounge then, and come back and tell me all about the culture, and the temples," she said.
After he had gone, she asked the steward nervously if there was any danger that he might get involved in any Thai night life which she feared might be rather too exotic.
"No fear at all, Madam," said the steward, who had seen, done and knew everything.
I watched five movies and because I had dozed through the key bit of Armageddon and hadn't quite realised that they were all oil riggers, not astronauts, I watched it again.
A long time later we got home.
THEN of course I realised why I hadn't emigrated to anywhere. Everyone in Dublin had views on absolutely everything, from the Blairs' visit, to the spike in O'Connell Street, the Budget, the fact that phone calls are now costing half nothing, that traffic is wedged solid in streets, and that someone we know has embarked on an affair astounding even by her standards.
And even though there are no hibiscus and bougainvillaea trees in the Dublin streets, and no pink and scarlet birds flying round and nestling in the trees of the Dublin suburbs, I'm still very glad to be home. And to be home in time for all that's happening.
As well as what seems like a nationwide gargantuan social calendar which would make you reach for the curative seltzers and cold eyepads in advance, there are other events.
Like tomorrow afternoon's great Light Up Life ceremony in the Hospice in Harold's Cross, when at 4 p.m. the music starts, and at five a huge tree is lit to the memory of all our friends and relatives who have died. More and more people find this a hugely healing and helpful gathering, where people can share a loss with a sense of hope, with music and refreshments. Many find it makes them closer and more at peace than visiting a graveyard has ever done.
Then next week - on Wednesday and Thursday - there will be performances of Handel's Messiah in St Patrick's Cathedral by the marvellous Culwick Choral Society which is 100 years old this year. It's in aid of The Arthritis Foundation of Ireland, a charity for which I feel a great affection, especially as my artificial hip carried me through bookstores, hotel corridors and airport after airport without even squawking at the security X-ray machines.
Whatever it's made of - which I never really asked.