Weather is bouncing around a bit in Sydney – 31oC on Thursday which was unfortunate as I had failed to listen to the weather forecast and in a fit of laziness had flung on a jumper over a very moth eaten singlet and so was forced to teach all day with a purple overheated tinge to both my complexion and my temper which must have alarmed my pupils somewhat. This weekend in contrast has been wet and windy with a daytime temperature of 16oC.
We’ve just come to the end of term 3 of the school year. Australian schools have 4 terms and finish the school year with a glorious burst of activity in December which combines Christmas and end of year celebrations and ensures most mothers stagger into Christmas feeling they deserve an unrealistically large reward under the Christmas tree. Drama Queen No 3’s school finished the term with the school show – a major production which involves every one of the school’s 430 pupils, all in costume and all singing and dancing. In fact school extravaganza might actually be a better term for it and such is the parental anticipation that the queue for tickets reputedly started at 5a.m. on the day they went on sale. I got there at 6.15 a.m. and there were about 40 people sitting smugly ahead of me. Part of the reason for the pressure to queue, is that the show is held in the school hall and if you are on the gnome like side of the height chart, as I am, then you need to make sure you are in the front half of the hall in order to appreciate every moment of your child’s moment of glory. DQ no3. announced before the opening night that they were having a final ‘Dry’ rehearsal – I privately thought if I was the teacher in charge I would actually have to have a hip flask strapped to my side to even contemplate stage managing a project of such Cameron Mackintosh size proportions.
I have just indulged in the annual swimsuit purchase. I got very excited by the lavish promises of the optimistically named “Miracle” swimsuit and squeezed myself into it with great excitement wondering what possible optical illusion could be employed to transform me into a Cindy Crawford look alike – we are after all roughly the same age. I have to say, as a swimsuit it did have fairly miraculous powers – not to mention reinforced stitching to hold one in and out – but as I twirled in Cindy like haze I suddenly caught sight of the price tag and if my innards hadn’t been clamped so tightly in lycra I might have had a complete choking fit. I sadly unpeeled the “miracle” and decided I might have to settle for the nearly as miraculous, at half the price.
In one of those dramatic double dating situations that I often seem to find myself in, owing to an inability to say no, last Saturday we managed to combine an adult dinner party for 8 with what DQ no.1 terms a ‘gathering’ involving a dozen hormone charged teenagers. As both events kicked off at the same time, it involved some interesting combinations on the doorstop. Whilst the evening had the potential to be a complete social nightmare, it was in fact surprisingly good fun, though it may be some time before our dinner guests with younger children recover form the exposure to modern teenage life.
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