Jessica starts High School

   February 2014

Letter No. 216

Dear all,

BACK TO SCHOOL The kids started school the last week of January. I had to go to Darwin that week and was there all week so I missed Jessica’s first day at her new high school -- St Aidan’s Anglican Girls’ School. I was not popular missing that but I managed to say good luck to Jessie very early before leaving for the airport. That night we talked on Facetime and she told me all about it. Matthew also started Year 11 and his day was also quite significant as he went straight after school to the Orthodontist to have his braces put on. He had a difficult first few days as his braces were uncomfortable and he couldn’t eat properly so was a bit grumpy. Jessie found her first few days at school challenging, as she struggled to work her locker key, find her way around the school and work out which books she needed for each class. She came home in tears one day as she’d been told off for being late, when she couldn’t actually find the classroom. It was probably a good thing I was away as I managed to avoid all the angst at home...

Meanwhile in Darwin I was doing final inspections of steelwork for buildings on two different Defence bases to allow them to start sheeting the roof. Most inspections are done by Darwin staff but for critical ones, someone comes up from Brisbane. One base was in Darwin and one in Katherine.  Unfortunately it was bucketing down rain all week so I ended up getting very wet!

FEBRUARY 2014 On Saturday 1^st February we went to “Ritzy Fish” for dinner with our friends the Grahams and the Tods. It is the local fish and chips shop but a little posher than your average chippie, with a nice BYO seating area outside the shop. Everyone wandered back around to our house for port afterwards, while the kids did a lot of running around the garden screaming and bouncing on the trampoline.

The next day (Sunday) Jessica had her audition for the St Aidan’s dance troupe which is called STAGE. She was very nervous as they are a tough group with a very high standard and only accept 34 girls from the whole school. It was a two-hour audition to see how quickly the girls could pick up a new dance routine. On Monday she found out that she had been accepted and she was delighted! In the end the group only took 28 girls as the standard of the other applicants was not high enough. The training is twice a week before school at 6:45am! This will be a big shock to Jessie’s system.

I went to a music festival on Sunday 2^nd February at Mt Cotton on the outskirts of Brisbane. It was called “A Day on the Green” and was held in a lovely green field at the Sirromet Winery. The bands playing were British India, Something for Kate, You Am I with the Hunters & Collectors headlining. The last time I saw the Hunters & Collectors was in 1992 with Craig and Kirsten Wiley – 22 years previously! This time I went with John Haughton and the audience was mainly in their 40’s. It was all quite civilised, with the winery selling wine by the bottle, which was going down quite quickly in the warm afternoon sun. We had a really great time and it brought back find memories of my youth!

Poor Molly had her annual vaccination on 7^th February. She thought she was going for a fun trip out but about half way down the path to the Vet she realised where she was going and turned tail and tried to scarper. Katie said she had never seen a dog quiver as much as she did on the table. She was judged healthy and perfect weight for a dog her size.

The kids and I went to White Water World that weekend. We had a nice day on the waterslides but I must have picked up a virus or something, as I felt very poorly by the time I got home and had to have the next two days off sick in bed with a cough and headache. 

On 15^th February we went to a 40^th Birthday party for an ex-AECOM employee Nathan Groenhaut. It was a wine tasting party and he had a professional wine company there, doing tasting for six different wines. They didn’t start until after we had been there for quite a while, so everyone was quite merry and perhaps didn’t pay as much attention to the wines as we should have. There was a lovely BBQ and heaps of canapés including to-die-for oysters. There were lots of people we knew there from AECOM and we had a really good night and slightly sore heads the next morning.

Katie had organised a big event at BBC which took place the following week on Tuesday 18 February. It was a Speaker Event with Dr Michael Carr-Gregg, who is one of Australia’s leading psychologists and appears regularly on TV and in other media to talk about parenting adolescents. The Parent Connections committee & Katie had done all the work for the event, organising the contract with his agency, booking Michael’s travel & hotel, arranging a full day’s schedule with talks to the boys, staff and the parents, and then working with BBC’s two sister schools to support the event. Michael was a very entertaining and professional speaker, very slick and funny but also very informative. He was a big hit with the students – and it takes a lot to impress a room full of 15-year-olds. At the evening presentation, Katie had to open the evening, making the introduction to an assembled audience of over 400 parents. The next day she received a large bouquet of flowers from BBC as a thank you for her efforts.

The next weekend Jessica went to her first high school dance at St Aidan’s. She went with a gaggle of her friends, all wearing matching outfits. I had to pick four of them up afterwards and drop them off for a sleepover at a friend’s house. I was amazed the difference between boys and girls when picking them up. Matthew had gone to the same dances a few years previously and when asked about the evening the best you could get was one word answers with no information at all. When I picked up the girls, they never stopped talking! They burbled on for the whole trip home and I drove extra slow to get more details from them. Apparently they were all OUTRAGED at the older boys and girls who were actually KISSING in the dark corners (Yay), the one boy who showed up drunk and got thrown out and that someone had pinched Jessica’s bum! She was very indignant about this and reported the boy to a teacher and got him thrown out as well (Yay again). It was really very amusing.

The next day Ian and Carmen Muir came over from afternoon tea. They were back from Hong Kong to set Carmen up for going to University. It hardly seems like yesterday when they brought her home and she is already a uni student! Ian had to come and help set her up with a place to live (with her grandmother) and then sort out bank accounts, tax file number, driver’s licence, car, university stuff and all the other life essentials. John Haughton also called in. It was nice to catch up.

On 27^th February it was the BBC Parents and Friend’s (P&F) Welcome Party. Once again Katie was organising this event, as the President of Parent Connections. I had been roped into running the bar yet again and arrived early to sort out the drinks and ice while Katie was running around pointing, as she does, getting people to fix up the sound system, lighting, catering etc and her team were stringing up fairy lights and sticking up green, black and white pompoms. Luckily there was lots of help this year so I managed to slope off and enjoy myself a little, rather than working all evening. There were tours around the new Middle School Building which had just opened that school year. AECOM had done the design work for the project so I went for a tour to see the completed building. The last time I had been to see it was when they were casting the reinforced concrete floors. It was a pretty impressive building when it was all fitted out. Each class room had five 42-inch TV screens so each group of six boys could work interactively on a different topic. Five classrooms had moveable walls, which could be removed to create a huge space over one entire floor plate. It was very wow. It was a nice evening and included background music by the boys, a mini art exhibition, plus several speeches by the School Captain, Headmaster etc. Katie was presented with flowers (again) for her organisation of the event and we both stayed until the bitter end cleaning up the bar. I am looking forward to next year when I can hopefully discharge all responsibilities and not work at the event at all! We had a fun evening all the same.

MARCH 2014 We had a BBQ at our house on 1^st March with a group a Graceville State School parents. I guess now that Jessica is not going to school with any of the children we will slowly drift apart but we owed them all a dinner.  Some of them are planning to do an overland 4WD trip through the Simpson Desert at Easter and tried to talk us into going with them. We were interested but decided we are not well equipped enough to tackle such a serious desert yet.

We were invited to a Tennis afternoon and Sausage Sizzle at Jeremy and Leona’s house the next weekend. Sadly we failed to ply our opponents with Pimms and Lemonade before our first doubles game this time and subsequently lost! Katie and I both had another game with other tennis partners and had a very pleasant evening. The kids all played tennis together after we had finished and then we all had a nice BBQ as the sun went down.

Wednesday 12 March was the BBC Twilight Concert. Matt is in mostly Senior bands this year so he was performing in it for the first time. The Twilight Concert is a great concert as it is shorter than some of the others and features the highest level ensembles with some really lovely music.

The next weekend we had my sister Lisa and family over for afternoon tea and a BBQ. The kids are always complaining that they never see their cousins enough so they were pleased to spend the afternoon together. Poor Andrew had to leave midway through the afternoon to go home and put their sheep and other animals to bed before coming back to our place for dinner. We had a nice relaxing afternoon.

It was the BBC Volleyball breakup dinner on 22^nd March. It is our favourite BBC sports event. It is a nice informal event held outdoors at the school amphitheatre with a simple BBQ and minimal speeches. It is very different to the Basketball dinner, where the speeches go on and on and on. It was a lovely warm afternoon and we had a nice chat with the other parents.

I went to see another big 1980s band, the Sunnyboys, on 28^th March with my mate John again. I went straight after work and we had a quick dinner at a pub near work. The lead singer had developed schizophrenia at the height of their fame and ended up drinking heavily and going a bit off the rails. There were about 3000 people at the concert, most in their 40s. The lead singer was grossly overweight and all the band members were bald or grey, but when I closed my eyes I could have been 16 again. They sounded exactly the same as when I saw them last in 1983 – 31 years ago! I had such a good time.

Now that Katie had finished doing school events (for a while at least), she has been on a mission to get the household jobs up to date. Through the past month she has had the dryer serviced, the house alarm system checked, the oven cleaned, the pest spray done, had a major service done on her car, bought a new chair and made a few trips to the garden centre. She has even booked in some expensive tree trimming work, to be done later this year. It has been an expensive few weeks.

Matt finished school on 3^rd April and Jessie finished on the 4^th. This term has really flown. Jessica had a really terrible last day. Her school had the annual cross country run in the morning, and afterwards some girls were mucking around throwing water in the bathrooms while they were getting changed. Somehow Jessie’s i-phone got wet. She dried it off but it didn’t seem to be working very well. That afternoon a big group of girls all went to Indooroopilly Shopping Town after school to hang out as an end-of-term treat. Jessie had planned to catch the train home from there. She had never caught the train from Indooroopilly to Graceville before and didn’t know that there are Express trains which sometimes stop at that station! She hopped on the next train without even thinking about it and was quite distraught when the train sailed straight past our stop and carried on all the way to Darra, about five stops down the line!

Jessie tried to ring Katie, but by this time her phone had almost stopped working, and she couldn’t hear anything that Katie was saying although Katie could hear her. A nice lady helped her find the platform for the slow Stopping-All-Stations train back to Graceville. There is quite a different social dynamic in Darra. By the time she got back onto the train, Jessie had learned a few of the differences between Graceville and Darra. According to her, almost everyone had tattoos and several people were rolling cigarettes on the train. One of them even stuck the cigarette behind his ear, which Jessie found quite shocking. There was only one free seat on the train next to a rough young boy with body piercings who used lots of swear words and said something rude about private school girls, so she moved down to the other end of the carriage. When she finally made it back to Graceville, Katie was standing on the platform to meet her and Jessie promptly burst into tears. I’m sure she won’t make that mistake again! Just to really ruin her day, Jessie’s i-phone had died completely by the evening, despite desperate attempts to dry it out with the hairdryer or a bowl of rice, so she is now saving up for a new phone. Not a great end to the first school term. It can only get better.

Matthew was invited to attend the “Brisbane Boys College Day of Excellence” on 4^th April. It was a simulation day for prospective students. There were about 30 boys selected by the Headmaster to assist on the day. Matthew was pleased to be asked as he thinks that the boys who were selected will be chosen as prefects when he is in Year 12 next year. They spent the day with prospective student buddies and went to pretend lessons all day. He said it was quite fun.

We went to a 50^th birthday party on 5^th April for one of Katie’s friends Fiona Cheyne. Fiona is one of the Parent Connections ladies and helps out at all of the events. The party was a nice mix of BBC parents and her family and she had done a bumper load of canapés which kept coming all night. They have a really unusual block where there is a street at the front of the house and also at the back of the house. I have never seen streets like that before. The party was nice but we didn’t stay too late as the next day my family was coming for a BBQ lunch.

We were up early in the morning. I ran back and got the car from the party while Katie prepared lunch. Mum and Dad were coming over for their combined birthday party and Lisa and Andrew and the kids came as well. We had an early Easter Egg Hunt for the kids after lunch to combine three celebrations into one. It had been a lovely day and the kids were all swimming but it started to rain just as the final Easter eggs were devoured.

That’s all for this month. Cheers,

Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica & Molly

 

Molly being a dog!

 

Skiing, Tokyo and back to Australia

January 2014

Letter No. 215

Dear all,

OUR JAPANESE TOUR   Day 9 - Tokyo to Hakuba.

Matthew, Jessica and I got up at 6am this morning to go to the Tsukiji fish market, but Katie elected to have a bit more time in bed. Tsukiji is the world’s largest fish market and sells an astounding 2400 tonnes of seafood per day. All manner of weird creatures are on sale. We arrived at 7:00am but were told that tourists were not allowed in until after 9:00am when most of the day’s serious business had been concluded. This was a bit disappointing so we walked around the back of the market and found a gate without a guard and snuck in anyway. It is very much a working market with handcarts and forklifts darting around in a high speed choreography that does not account for tourists. It was really quite frightening how many there were and how fast they moved. We spent nearly an hour wandering around looking at all the sea creatures, alive, dead and all stages in between. The most spectacular was the enormous blue fin tuna being carved up with huge lethal looking knives. We were all really pleased we made the effort to go. We rushed back to the hotel and had a quick breakfast with Katie and showed her all the gruesome photos that Jessica had taken, before grabbing our bags and setting out on the journey to the ski resort of Hakuba.

We took the bullet train to Nagano not knowing what time the bus left to Hakuba. Fortunately there was a bus in ten minutes after we arrived and before we knew it we were off up the mountain. We stayed at the Deer Lodge, a recently opened lodge owned by an Australian/Japanese family, and the owner met us at the station. In the afternoon we found out about lift passes, hired our ski gear and went to another Onsen, or Japanese bathhouse. It was a few hundred metres walk down the hill and was a really lovely onsen in a nice hotel. There was even an outside rock pool with heated water surrounded by snow on the ground, which was really nice. Matthew got out and walked into the snow and contemplated lying down it (but didn’t). It was odd being able to stand up next to the outdoor pool, stark naked and look over the fence onto the road below with people in full ski gear. It was quite crowded, with at least 20 people in the men’s and 12 in the ladies. It was a nice relaxing afternoon and then we caught a taxi back up to the hotel and had dinner at a local Japanese restaurant.

Day 10 – Hakuba -- skiing

Our first day skiing! Our hotel was really well situated on the edge of one of the slopes and we could ski straight out, but it took us a little while to find our ski legs. Jessie needed a bit of persuading to feel comfortable on skis. At one stage, after she had fallen over one time too many, she had a big hissy fit, announced that she hated skiing and then took off both her skis in the middle of the slope.  Fortunately Katie managed to coax her back on to her skis and down the hill. After a while Katie decided we were good enough to venture up the mountain and on to some bigger slopes. Despite severe misgivings voiced by both Matthew and myself, Katie insisted on taking us down an Intermediate Red run. Jessica had another fall, followed by a major falling out with Katie, after which we split up for the afternoon. Jessie and I went on the beginner runs for the rest of the day while Katie and Matt did some more red runs. Jessica made good progress through the afternoon and we did some quite nice long slopes and a pleasant green run through the trees. We finished up around 4pm and had happy hour in the hotel bar and then went on to a BBQ restaurant which had little BBQs in the centre of each table to grill your own food.

Day 11 – Hakuba

The kids and I hit the slopes a bit earlier than Katie, starting out with a nice green run through the forest where we saw lots of snow monkeys. Unfortunately we had skied past most of them before we realised they were there. We have worked out where they live so we will go back tomorrow to have a better look. Everyone’s skiing steadily improved during the day and by the afternoon we were all sailing down intermediate red runs. I think I fell over more than Jessica. Matthew falls over all the time but that is because he is a reckless daredevil and seems unfazed by it. Jess and I on the other hand hate falling over and go slow and steady to avoid it. We had a good day skiing, with ideal skiing conditions and a beautiful blue sky. The ski runs are very quiet. There is never more than thirty seconds of queuing for lifts.

Day 12 – Hakuba

We started to explore further afield on the ski runs today. I nearly had a huge disaster just after lunch when I was half way up a chair lift, looked down and suddenly realised I only had one ski on! Katie was in the chair ahead of me and the kids were two chairs in front. I told Katie I had lost a ski and she said “Oh no” really loudly. The kids looked back and saw Katie in the chair lift by herself and both thought that I had fallen out!! They had a good laugh when they saw me with only one ski on. Katie, as the best skier, said she would ski back down the chair lift to try and find my ski, but we were a bit worried about whether she would find it.

Getting off a chair lift with only one ski on is quite a challenge. I promptly fell on my face under the chair lift! Luckily Katie yelled “duck”, as I was just about to be decapitated by the next chair as the operator had not stopped the lift. I crawled out of the way, with Katie’s help, and she was just about to go and search for my ski when the lift operator said, “Wait, ski coming”. A few more chairs and then a man appeared carrying my ski. I was very lucky. I mustn’t have put my ski back on properly before getting on the lift and it had fallen off just as I got on.

That night we went to a restaurant called Sumo-tai. We walked down to the restaurant. It was snowing REALLY heavily and was quite fun to walk in. The restaurant is owned by an ex-sumo wrestler. He was there when we arrived and posed for photos with us. We ordered a meal which was the same portion size that a sumo wrestler would eat. It was a delicious stew with meatballs, chicken, beef, vegetables and noodles which was more than enough for all four of us.  

Day 13 - Hakuba

There had been lots of snow overnight. More than 40cm so it was a winter wonderland in the morning. We did lots of new red runs in the morning. It was snowing quite a bit and really foggy at the top of the mountain so it was like skiing through milk! We decided to stay on the lower runs. After lunch we split up. I stayed with Jessica and we did some nice easy red and green runs before Jessica decided to do a black run. I reluctantly agreed to do it with her. All was going well until I misjudged a mogul and ended up sliding down the mountain, head first on my back with my legs all tangled up. I slid for a long way, in fact most of the way down the run, before finally coming to rest. I did get down it as did Jessica who only fell once. Jessica quietly told Katie and Matthew afterwards that I fell down “quite a lot”! Afterwards Jessica did it again with me doing the green run that joined it at the bottom and stopping to video her.  She was so determined to do a black run before Matthew, because she is envious that he is a faster skier than she is.

Day 14 – Hakuba

A relatively fine day today made for much more pleasant skiing. We were all stating to do Black runs. I skipped the mogul fields after my experience of the day before but the kids and Katie gave them all a go.

Day 15 – Hakuba

Out last day skiing. Our mission for the day was to get right to the top of the mountain. It was snowing heavily again but we did make it to the top. Unfortunately it was a total whiteout again, but the powdery snow was really thick and soft, a bit like snowing through sand with zero visibility.  It was a red / black run down from the mountain top and I was quite scared that I would ski off a huge cliff by accident. Katie led us down in a little group, and we made it down safely; it was quite fun actually.

Matthew wanted to ski by himself for a while so he set back off into the blizzard and agreed to meet us for lunch. We were a little worried when he was half an hour late. We were just about to panic when he turned up covered in snow and ice having been right over the top in zero visibility again! We had a nice warming Japanese curry lunch and a last afternoon ski before we went back to the hotel. We had a huge snowball fight in the waist-deep snow outside the hotel, made snow angels and then built a snow man which Jessie named Bob.

Day 16 & 17 – Hakuba to Tokyo to Gold Coast to Brisbane

Today was the start of our long trip back home. We left at 8am and took the bus back to Nagano then bullet train ride back to Tokyo. We went to Ueno Station and put our luggage into lockers. It was much warmer in Tokyo – about 2 degrees. It had been -8 degrees when we left Hakuba. We had five hours to do some sightseeing before our train to the airport so we went to the markets just across the road from the station. Everyone was hungry so we stopped for lunch at a sushi train first. It was very local and no one spoke any English. We had to point at what we wanted and then explain that the children didn’t want wasabi. When the chef finally got it he whipped up new dishes for us before our eyes. We walked on into the markets. It was a very busy and very eclectic mixture of stalls -- raw fish, designer handbags, fruit, pets, live seafood, shoe shops – all side by side. We got new shoes for the kids and a handbag and purse for Jessica.

Afterwards we went for a walk in the nearby park. So many Japanese people have tiny, cute, fluffy little handbag dogs, which they take out for a walk (or carry) in the afternoon sunshine. We were constantly amazed how twee the dogs were, each one seeming more ridiculous than the last! We followed on with the pet theme, as Matthew wanted to go to a Cat Café for afternoon tea. This is a very quirky Japanese thing. The cafes are for people who love cats and want to spend time with them, but aren’t allowed to keep pets in their apartment blocks. People just go there and spend time stroking them and drinking tea. Matt found one nearby and we signed in for 30 minutes. It was a small room with about 30 cats of every description wandering around, with heaps of beds, toys and cat playthings. Jessie is quite allergic to cats so she wasn’t allowed to touch them and just took photographs.

We caught the bullet train on to the airport, spent our last Yen and boarded our flight back to Australia. It was an overnight flight landing at 6:30am. I only slept for about ten minutes on the flight. We picked up our car; unfortunately they had disconnected the battery while we were away so all the electronics were messed up – back in miles and gallons and the radio was locked! My heart sank thinking I needed to get an access code from Ford in the UK to get the radio to work again but luckily, Katie found the code in the glove box and managed to get the radio going before we got home. Dad had dropped Molly home so she was there to greet us when we arrived home about 9:30am. I unloaded the car, had a quick swim & shower and went straight off to work for the rest of the day. I don’t think I was very effective though!

JANUARY 2014 A couple of quietish weeks followed before the kids went back to school on 28 January. On 17^th January we went to see an Agatha Christie play, “A Murder is Announced” at the Queensland Performing Arts Complex. It was Katie’s Christmas present to us all. Everyone really enjoyed it. The kids were sitting in the audience absolutely beaming and trying to guess “whodunit”.  So sweet.

We had a night out with some BBC families who have boys in Matt’s year. Jessica refused to come out with a whole heap of older boys and decided to go for a girly sleepover instead. I hope she holds that opinion of older boys for a long time to come! 

We had a BBQ on Sunday 18^th January with a different set of BBC parents and boys. Poor Jessica was the only girl again, so she sat with the adults rather than with teenage boys. We had a nice BBQ. Matthew’s reputation was enhanced in the eyes of his friends when a group of teenage girls in bikinis came calling and invited Matt to a pool party. They were his friends who just live up the street. Matthew politely declined but as the afternoon progressed he quietly arranged for one of the boys to stay for a sleepover and they both shot off to the party as soon as everyone left.

We went to see a couple of great movies. One was The Book Thief, a sad story about a German family with an adopted Polish daughter who hide a Jew during the Second World War. The other movie was Saving Mr Banks, a true story about the making of the movie of Mary Poppins, in which Walt Disney was played by Tom Hanks. Both very entertaining movies and well worth seeing.

Another weekend we went to Bribie Island with our friends the Haughtons and hired a BBQ boat. It was rather a last minute thing and we could only get the boat early in the morning. The kids and Katie was a little appalled when we realised we’d have to leave at 6am! We had a smooth trip and were on the boat at 7:15am and shortly thereafter frying bacon, eggs and sausages for breakfast. We had a brilliant morning and saw dolphins (including a baby), several dugongs, two stingrays leaping right out of the water and lots of birdlife. Matthew had taken his huge inflatable boat and all the kids had a great time playing in it. We just cruised around the bay for a while until it was time to go back. Jessica will be starting school with Alisha Haughton at St Aidan’s the following week, so it was good for them to catch up before school started.

The next day we went to our favourite dog beach in Currumbin. It was a little overcast but Matt really wanted to use his boat again before the end of the holidays. We went for a cruise around the bay with Molly, but she didn’t really enjoy the boating experience and shivered in mortal terror. We had a nice lunch at our favourite café.  A great last day out at the end of the Summer holidays. 

That’s all for this month. 

Cheers, 

Derek, Katie, Matthew, Jessica & Molly

Cat Cafe