Better late than never

The weather turned a little wild on Sunday afternoon so, rather than going to the river, we went to the Shephards' instead. They have loads of space for the kids in their garden.

The garden looks lovely and I wasn't bitten by even one mosquito!

A few of the kids swam and Bethany asked me to take a photo of her trick. She sat on a noodle and blew water out the back like a fountain. We had pizza for dinner, the kids played cricket and I embarrassed Jossie by playing Just Dance 3 in front of other people.

My Christmas cake fruit is finally sitting on the bench soaking up rum and brandy. I did mean to do that in October.

We're going to dress up this evening and go to the theatre. Shep suggested that the worst that could happen is that Bethany will fall asleep in her chair. What? No, what we fear is that we won't be able to keep her in her chair and her voice out of the whole theatre's ears!

Loving the Eighties

Another great song from Time Bandits. I didn't even fancy any of them. I already had this one scheduled Janice!

To market to market

It has been all go here for the last few weeks. As well as the marking I have been making cards to sell at three days worth of markets. Megan very kindly went down to Corowa and did that market alone so, on Friday, I took the day off work to go to the CMRI (Children's Medical Research Institute) markets.

It is a Christmas market held over two days each year at the racecourse. The weather has been mild up until now but it was getting very warm on Friday so we appreciated the cover.

I was with Liz to set up from just after 8 and apart from an hour when she had her children and took them around the stalls, we worked together. We saw lots of people we know and many people recognised me from the library.

While Liz was away with the children I served a lady with a Scottish accent. Of course I told her that she has my very favourite accent ever and she told me that she lectures and has come to accept that her accent is part of her appeal as a lecturer. It started to dawn on me that she might be my biology teacher from Year 11 so I asked her if she used to teach at Barker and when I told her my maiden name, she remembered me and told me all the people from my year that she still sees! It was a delightful meeting and it is so extraordinary that she could remember a girl she taught for one year, in 1989! For those who knew me at school, I quite enjoyed biology and liked Mrs Philps so was very well behaved in her class. If I were to run into my English, Maths or French teachers........

Two people told us that we had the prettiest stall. I said thank-you even though it is all thanks to Liz and Megan! I provide the Wedgewood boxes which act as our money tin and refill box, and a three tiered Willow pattern cake plate. On Saturday morning I went in alone as Megan and Liz have much smaller children and had no babysitters for the morning. I didn't have a coffee because I couldn't leave the stall to go to the loo!

Now we don't have any more markets till next year so I have free evenings without compulsory marking or making! I celebrated yesterday afternoon by finishing off Mary S Lovell's The Churchills. It was brilliant and I wish I could talk about Winston with my Granny. Now I'll concentrate on The Hare with Amber Eyes and I need to read my book club book again (How Proust Can Change your Life). Our final book for the year is The Paris Wife which I have been very keen to read. 

On Thursday I had to attach silver ribbon tape to 65 Christmas tags so did it in front of a movie. We read Never Let Me Go (Kazuo Ishiguro) for book club a few months ago and it had mixed reactions. Sonya had seen the film and enjoyed it so when I found it at the library I grabbed it to take home. Andrew was less than excited by the cover and even the fact that it is science fiction didn't make it appealing (actually, he didn't believe me) so I watched it alone. I think they did a brilliant job of interpreting the book. A few things were done differently, as is to be expected, but on the whole I really enjoyed it. I think the book's story about the song was far more poignant. In the film a young girl is given a tape by a boy she likes and is seen listening to "Darling never let me go", swaying and holding a pillow. Her friend sees her and we later see that she knew the young girl was in love and took the young man for herself. In the book, the song has the word 'baby' rather than darling, and she cradles a pillow as though it were a real baby. The person who sees her is Madame and she is moved to tears. The film obviously chose to focus on the romance at the expense of some depth but it was a lovely adaptation. I'm not a great fan of Keira Knightley and so it helps that her character isn't completely sympathetic.

My Fair Lady opened last night and was, by all accounts, brilliant. We are going to see it on Friday night and I can't wait, though I am a little apprehensive about Bethany staying up until after 11pm. Tonight we are heading down to the river for dinner with a large part of the cast and orchestra for the show. Actually, it's just the Shephards but four of them are in the show! I'm not looking forward to going outside because we are in that fabulous part of the year when one can be too hot and sneezing and scratching one's eyes out. I'm hoping it will rain so we can go to the Shephards' and play Just Dance 3.

Loving the Eighties

I would have to say that I still love this song.

Celebrations

Last year, you may recall, Andrew played in the band for the local production of The Boy from Oz. This year he is in the orchestra for My Fair Lady. Rehearsals every few minutes are going to be worthwhile when Joss, Toby, Bethany and I go to see the production next Friday night. Andrew has watched the movie with the kids. I haven't seen the film for a long time but remember that the romance is pretty disappointing. She comes back and instead of a kissing her, he sits down for a nap in his armchair and asks for his slippers!?

Last night, as I was at work until 7 and rehearsal started at 6.30, Andrew left the big kids at home and brought Bethany in to the library. On our way home we saw two gangs of children, well, one was of teenagers, roaming the streets of our suburb trick or treating. When I pulled in to the drive, Joss and Tobes poked their head through the curtains. The trick or treaters had knocked on the door but as we had no lollies, Joss and Tobes just hid! The kids ought to be thankful that they were spared my lecture on the Americanisation of our society. I have no problem with with the American tradition of celebrating Halloween, though I don't really understand it, but it isn't our tradition.

Melbourne Cup festivities on the other hand.... I'm not remotely interested in the race itself. I like the food.

I like dressing up.

I enjoyed crimping Jeannie's hair.

I will continue enjoying the food tomorrow as we rather over-catered.

Yay for Australia, and yay for New South Wales as I wouldn't have had this fun if we'd been on holiday like Victoria. I'd have had other fun, but I'm putting a positive spin on the lack of public holiday. I think the celebration is really a work avoidance thing. Very few customers watched it with us but the whole council came downstairs to watch it on the big screen in the council meeting room. Work avoidance, what could be more Australian?

It begins....

I had my first Stampin' Up class at my house on Saturday night. My work friends came over and we made Christmas tags.

Making Christmas tags in October is not at all the same thing as having Christmas decorations in the shops. It's about being prepared and saving yourself from madness in December.

Andrew was pleasantly surprised by the level of noise and amused by the level of chaos on the table.

These are some of Kristy's tags. She had lemon tart (from Bernard our French baker) and custard in that bowl.

We have been kept enthralled by Jossie's tales of the new madness amongst her classmates. The boys have commenced asking the girls to go out with them. Not that they go anywhere or do anything at all, from what I can gather. Jossie thinks that she and another girl are the only sane ones left. We think it's all beginning to get very interesting. Bethany is way ahead, of course, as she kissed a boy behind the library last year when she was in Kindy! Toby isn't being left out either as a girl rang him up and asked him to go to the bushdance. She's a family friend and also asked the rest of us, so we certainly aren't teasing him or mentioning the 'like' word, you know, like like. Somehow, I can see this all becoming less funny in the future.

Loving the Eighties

I had this song on a compilation album, the name of which I can't remember. I did like it a lot.