A Question Of Upbringing

That cliché about kids growing up too fast? It’s true you know.

B1 started school this week, which makes me feel extremely old (38 this Sunday in fact). She’s having a great time and is already taking stuff on board from class that we never pushed at home. For example:

B1 (hands dad a piece of paper); Daddy, what have I written here?
Dad; BLKDG HBSES…they’re very good letters sweetheart but I’m not sure they make up words.
B1; Oh well, I was trying to write Black Dog and Hobbes (2 of her cuddly toys) by sounding out the letters.
Dad; Holy moses….Shell! Shell! She can write!



Meanwhile, in “this never happened in my day” news…

We were having lunch at the pub a few days back but we had foolishly forgotten to bring coloured pencils and what-have-you for the increasing bored kids. M, all nonchalant like, said “Just download an app for them”. A couple of minutes and $1.19 later, they were both happily hunched over the phone playing a Wiggles game.

They'll never regard that as weird, will they?

Gigtastic

2 very different gigs for M&I last weekend.

On Friday there was a cultured affair, Sufjan Stevens at the Sydney Opera House under the aegis of the Sydney Festival. Abstract art-pop played by a man in a dayglo outfit, 2 backing singers with knowingly naff dance routines and two trombone players.



On Saturday we were at the deeply unpleasant Coogee Bay Hotel for Primal Scream doing their classic Screamadelica LP, an album without which M&I would never have met. Rocked out version of drugged out classics played by scuzzy Glaswegian boys and a bass player with any number of claims to fame.



Totally different, as I say, but both already contenders for gig of the year. Magnificent.

Photomontage

The last couple of weeks have been scorching hot here in Sydney, which has been great for the Bs. The pool at the end of our street has been getting visits two or three times a day (improving their swimming skills no end), with the odd trip to a shady park thrown in.





We had a fun outing the other night to the Botanical Gardens (right on Sydney Harbour)for the Australian Shakespeare Company production of The Wind in the Willows.





The story was an important one in my childhood, so I was delighted how engaged B1 was by the energetic highly entertaining show. She even got to meet the star.



B2 found it a little bemusing so he sat at the back with M&I and our friends Richard and Louise, munching away on cheese and crackers.