Stuff We Did

The Cherub tripped and fell at school, grazing his hip and knee and his poor little nose. I think the nose injury means he now looks like a koala, but he gets miffed at me when I say that. The week before last he had a nasty cough and the school rang me to say he was feeling off-colour and did I want to collect him? Then the nurse said to me, in all seriousness, He's not one to make a fuss and I thought -but didn't say- Really? (At home, he is the person most likely to make a fuss.)



I took Nell and the kids to see an amateur pantomime, directed by the son of one of the Nannas from Nanna Tap and starring her daughter-in-law, also one of my students. It was really, really amateur and at first I was a little taken aback that all these terrible singers were prepared to get up and sing in public. (Apart from my tap student who has a nice voice.) But that had its own charm after a while. The kids loved it, and particularly enjoyed the booing of the villain. They also both loved the stupid pantomime humour. There was this one joke, delivered by the yokel characters, chefs called Steak and Kidney:
Steak: You're a terrible cook, you don't even know how to make an egg roll!
Kidney: Yes, I do, you just push it!
Immediately, Cherub turned to me with an amused and proud look on his face and said I get that. Poor kid. He has been trying to make the transition into Older Kid who Understands what Everyone Else is On About. There's a lot of explaining going on.

Nell and I also went to the old Creche's Trivia Night, and came in a respectable third, a mere 2 points behind the winner. To be honest, we prefer a slightly higher level of pop culture in our trivia nights. But my Mum will be pleased to know that there was a question about her late friend Viv's well-known father, and that I got it right.

Mister Fixit has a crown on his front tooth which has been giving him trouble. For the last week it has been popping out, so at home he often removes it totally for safety. This means my otherwise handsome partner occasionally morphs into a Dickensian character with a missing front tooth. I've been really sympathetic about this. He's not to talk to me unless he has his tooth in, and if I catch sight of the stump I pull revolted faces. I'm nice like that. He takes it with surprising good grace, and only occasionally punishes me with a leery grin.

Climber's team had an absolutely smashing game this weekend, playing the top team and performing so well that although we lost 3-1, it felt like a victory. As we walked off we could hear the opposition coach yelling at his team and our coach said quietly and a little smugly, that's how you know we got to them. Such a tonic after the previous game where, in the freezing cold and heavy rain, we watched our team squander our 3-nil lead against one of the 2 teams we can actually beat (we're 3rd-worst in our division) and scrape out of it with a draw, partly because Climber made a desperate tackle at the deathknock stopping what would have been an opposition winning goal. Whose coach do you think was yelling then, hmm?

The kids are very addicted to an online game called Minecraft. It involves mining and building, and seems harmless on the face of it. But for some reason it is very intense and Climber was finding himself unable to sleep because his brain wouldn't switch off afterwards. So I've banned it on schooldays. Poor Climber is a little sad about this as he can't talk about his latest achievements with his similarly obsessed schoolfriends, all of whom have less parental restrictions than us. Luckily for me he doesn't make an enormous fuss about these things, just asks me somewhat forlornly if we really need to do this. In fact, a week or so before I banned it he had suggested that he thought he needed a break from it because it was so consuming, but then like all good addicts he changed his mind at computer time next day and announced he was fine. Meanwhile, I am pretty addicted to Angry Birds (3 stars a must!) and Words With Friends, but not losing sleep.