Month: October 2006

Yes, even though October is drawing to a close we are still harvesting raspberries, grapes and tomatoes here plus our pelargoniums are still outside as we haven’t had a frost yet.

Rosemary was hale and hearty after 4 days without us. It has so far been a good plan to get our neighbour to look after her rather than transporting the animal somewhere else. She is not that curious to be outside though, compared to our previous cat so maybe it wasn’t such a hardship. The picture shows Mia and Rosemary discussing tactics on the Pet Hotel computer game.

The girls have just been to see ‘Over the Hedge’ which they said was very good. We adults went and had a long coffee in one of the two cafés open in Grenaa instead. Today was the end of half term so back to work and school tomorrow.

Gwen says that she has been dreading this for seven years. There is an annual school festival at which it is traditional for the 6th year (Gwen’s year) to do a play. It must be said that some of the recent ones have been terrible. And that is what Gwen’s class teacher thought also as she put out the message that this year was going to be different and that it would be a fantastic performance that no-one would forget and for all the right reasons.

The chosen piece was a cowboy farce. Some of the children had problems with the setting because they don’t watch cowboy films or series as much as they did when we were young. So one homework task was to watch a cowboy film. I managed to find one which had the requisite saloon punch-ups and shoot outs (Ride the High Country, 1962 in case you’re wondering!). There was also a great deal of work around the special effects and what could they use for blood, how to simulate shattering glass and so on.

Last night was the big night and it went very well. The audience laughed in all the right places and for someone who wasn’t that willing in the first place, Gwen ended up with a character who had quite a bit to say for himself even though he wasn’t the main character. She was the sardonic barber since you ask. So why isn’t the picture one of Gwen’s thespian exploits? Well it was dark, we were badly placed in the audience and Gwen wasn’t keen on the idea and was out of her costume as soon as the last note died away. For somebody as unkeen as she was, she looked remarkably confident and has now experienced the Madonna-style wireless microphone with powerpack on your back belt.

So the picture is instead one of Mia whose duty was to man a pop stall. The school had been running a theme week just prior to the school festival on the topic of Japan. So Mia has her Chinese dress on. Chinese/Japanese – nearly the same!

Mia has taken to scouts/brownies/beavers very enthusiastically and wanted a uniform after two weeks attendance. She signed up immediately to the first weekend camp which took place just North of Grenaa last weekend. We still haven’t properly debriefed her on what happened there because as soon as she got home she lay down on the sofa and slept for four hours and so the moment was lost. But we know that it involved a walk to the beach to do some beachcombing and that one of the scout leaders had her young baby along for the whole thing in true Scandinavian fashion.

There’s another camp planned for the beginning of November and Mia is already signed up!