TheBanyanTree: What I do on a Saturday

[Peter Macinnis]

For us, exciting things happen at times. Our Kiwi grandchildren went 
home three weeks ago after Christmas. ("Kiwi" means they come from New 
Zealand).

Anyhow, now we are over here to be their child minders until school goes 
back, then we take a train down the North Island, a ferry to the South 
Island, walk around some nice bits and then a train to Christchurch, 
from which we fly home, possibly via a glacier or three.

The North Island gets the volcanoes, the south has earthquakes, 
especially Christchurch. We'll wait and see. The South was largely 
populated by Scots, so they have weird vowels: when they say "better 
bitter batter", it comes out as "bitter butter better" to Australian 
ears.  I'm almost ready for that.

Ere we head off in the first train, we will go to movies, consume hot 
chocolate, swim in the chilly South Pacific, take the kids to 'Much Ado 
About Nothing', and play a lot of Uno. I have just taught Alastair how 
to tune his guitar (the extent of my surviving accomplishments with that 
instrument) and I am getting Brianna working on playing piano by ear, 
taking out her Suzuki violin pieces. Given the season, we tried 
'Summertime' (almost all on the black keys) last night.

She and I have a regular summer project of co-writing the story of the 
Ninja Tooth Fairy. We talk about it lots, but a few weeks back, when I 
suggested a horse, named after René Descartes (so he could claim to have 
been Descartes before the horse), we branched off into Cartesian doubt 
and cogito ergo sum and all that stuff. At almost 13, she just takes it 
all in.

I seem to have brought over far more books than I thought, so I suppose 
I will have to do lots of reading.  It's a filthy job, but somebody has 
to do it...

On 19/1/20 13:41, tobie at shpilchas.net wrote:
> On the other  hand, some exciting things do happen.

-- 
Peter Macinnis petermacinnis at ozemail.com.au
On the Mac, somewhere in New Zealand;
Anapest exterminator to select members of the gentry.
http://oldblockwriter.blogspot.com.au/