Letter
No. 242
Dear all,
SCHOOL HOLIDAYS Jessica got her driving learner’s
permit on 15th September. She screamed into the testing centre after
the last day of school and passed the written test first time which was good.
She was desperate to start driving straight away but she couldn’t as the next
day she was heading off on the St
Aidan’s Ski Trip to New Zealand. There were 100 St Aidan’s girls going to
Mt Hutt for a week, along with about 50 BBC boys staying at the same resort.J Jessie was delighted that she got
placed in the most advanced ski group. There were about 10 skiers and 1 snowboarder
in the Advanced group, 20 in Intermediate and all the rest were Beginners. The
girls stayed in self-contained apartments and by all accounts they had a
fantastic week. They did lots of skiing as well as a helicopter ride and a jet
boat ride. She will be a better skier than me next time we go!
Katie and I went for lunch at the new restaurant
in the village, Hunter & Scout, while she was away. We find ourselves doing
more and more things without the kids now. Matt is always working or studying
and Jessie is so busy with school work and activities. Jessica returned from
New Zealand on 23rd September. She had just one night at home before
we dropped her at Fingal’s Head on the Gold
Coast to stay with a school friend for a couple of nights. On the way back we
stopped at our favourite dog beach, Palm Beach in Currumbin. Molly is always
happy to spend a day out with us. We had a nice morning on the beach and lunch
before going back to Brisbane.
Jess came back on the 26th and
finally managed to fit in her first couple of driving lessons. It is a bit
nerve-wracking having another Learner in the family. On 29 September we all went
to the Sunshine Coast together. We
had taken a big Airbnb house at Yaroomba near Coolum for three nights and were
sharing it with two other families. It was a fantastic house. We had three
lovely days, playing volleyball on the beach, going to the nearby Peregian
Markets and having dinner at the Coolum Surf Club. One afternoon we climbed up Mt
Coolum which was an easy one-hour hike to the top of the mountain. It is 208m
above sea level and gives a spectacular view up and down the coast.
October On 5th October there was
another St Aidan’s event with STAGE dancing so I went along to watch with Katie
after work. I always like going to see them perform. STAGE is having a
fantastic year with much improved dance routines, great costumes and a terrific
coach/choreographer, so there is a much more positive vibe this year than in
previous years.
The next Sunday, 8th October, we
went to Chris Barnard’s funeral. Chris’
wife Helen was a good friend of Katie’s and had taken over Katie’s role at BBC Parent
Connections a couple of years earlier. Helen and Chris were both very
community-minded people who had been hugely involved with their church and
school communities. Chris was a lovely quiet and thoughtful man who had died of
cancer, aged 51. His two kids are almost the same age as ours, with their
youngest boy in Y12 at BBC. The funeral was in the BBC College Hall with about
600 people in attendance. Chris had recorded a video message to his family and all
the people at his funeral and this was played during the ceremony, which was
very moving. His four tenets were fishing, finance, family and faith. Afterwards
there was a wake at Hillstone Golf Club in St Lucia. It was a very sad day. In the space of just
one month we have now lost two lovely friends, aged just 51 and 52. Far too
young.
Our 21st
Wedding Anniversary was on 12th October. We went for dinner at
Tinderbox Italian Restaurant in Fortitude Valley. It was a short walk from my
office and Katie drove in. We had a nice evening. 21 years is a long time.
On 14th October Jessica went to
Movieworld with a group of four friends for a Fright Night event. It is a Halloween-themed evening. They had a
great time and went on loads of rides and had dinner. I drove down to pick them
up at 10pm. Due to a slight miscommunication, I actually went to Dreamworld,
not Movieworld and texted the girls to say that I was waiting in the car park. Luckily
Katie was looking on “Find My Friends”, a phone tracking app and realised I was
at the wrong theme park! It was only a ten-minute drive between them,
fortunately. The girls were all very
giddy with excitement about their great night and hardly seemed to notice.
The next night, 15th October I went
to see Midnight Oil at the Brisbane River
Stage with John and Karen Haughton. The weather forecast was dire with heavy
rain and thunderstorms; not great for an outdoor concert. We got to the venue
about an hour before the gates opened. It was raining lightly so there weren’t
many people in the queue and we got a position in the front row. About 30
minutes later we realised that we were directly in front of a huge speaker
stack so decided to move. We ended up in about the sixth row right in the
centre. Fortunately we were still under the canopy of the stage. It was
bucketing down during the support acts and a few rows behind us people were getting
drenched, like standing in a shower. The rain slowed to a light drizzle as
Midnight Oil hit the stage. It was the most fantastic concert I have been to
for a very long time. I don’t agree with their politics but their music is fantastic.
We made it home, fairly soggy, before 11pm. A great evening.
The next couple of weeks saw the announcements
of Awards and Leadership roles for
2018. Jessie progressively learned that she had been chosen as a Prefect and STAGE
Dance Captain at St Aidan’s and the Dance Leader at Australian Girls’ Choir. Year
12 is going to be a big year for her. She also won two school awards, the
Religious Education Prize and the special Old Girls’ Award for Community
Service. This is basically an award for being a kind, caring and thoughtful
person in the school community. There is only one award per year group so Jessie
was very honoured to have been chosen.
Jessica was singing with Australian Girls’
Choir at Suncorp Stadium for the Bledisloe
Cup (Australia v New Zealand) on 21st October. They sing the
National Anthem behind the players and “I still call Australia Home” as crowd
entertainment. We never get to see the girls on TV as the cameras always focus on
the players, but we usually hear them singing in the background.
It was the STAGE
Celebration Breakfast on 27th October, which is the end-of-year
event for the dance group. Katie was organising it and Jessie was also
involved, as next year’s Dance Captain. It was a bit of a hectic morning. We
all got up at 5:30am and were travelling different directions, doing tasks and
getting the breakfast ready. I had to drop off Katie and Jessie separately,
collect pre-ordered bouquets of flowers from the flower markets and ham and
cheese croissants from the bakery. I made it back to school just in time and
Katie and her team had the breakfast all set up in time for the guests to
arrive at 6.45am. It was a nice morning. Jessie was pleased to win the Year 11
Improvement Trophy. She and Gemma, the other dance captain, gave a nice speech
welcoming everyone to STAGE for the next year. Katie also made a speech and
gave flowers to all the STAGE committee members.
We had our usual Halloween event on 31st October. We set up the usual
witches’ lair with skeletons, spider’s webs and smoke machine. Katie invited a
couple of friends to come in costume and the three witches did a lot of
cackling as they handed out over 1200 sweets and drank their special witches’ “potion”
(wine)! I ran a sausage sizzle on the footpath and sold 120 sausages which just
about covered the cost of the sweets. At times there were more than 30 people
queuing up. We closed up the witches’ lair around 7.30pm when we ran out of
sweets and lots of our friends and neighbours drifted over for a few drinks.
Katie produced a cheese platter and we had sausages, cheese and red wine for
dinner. Everyone stayed quite late and it was a big struggle to go to work the
next day.
November It was Melbourne Cup on 7th
November. I had decided I was sick of the limp chicken sandwiches and red
rooster chips at work, so this year I went to the St Aidan’s Melbourne Cup Lunch. Katie was again, of course,
organising the event so I had to drop her and all the raffle/auction prizes off
at the venue on the morning before going home to get changed. Matthew kindly
dropped me there so we didn’t have to leave the car there. There were 110
ladies and 10 men at the function. I knew most of them so I had a nice time.
The food was great and it was a fun event with a little fashion parade, raffle,
sweepstakes on the race and a live auction. I didn’t win anything in the
sweepstakes unfortunately, but we bought one of the auction prizes, which was a
45-minute band gig. The band is made up of a group of St Aidan’s teachers; we
have seen them play before and know they are really good. We will have to have
another party! Lunch finished at 4pm and we retired to the bar. All in all, it
was a much better option than going to work. I think I will go along next year
(no doubt Katie will be organising it again) and hopefully there will be a few
more men next time.
Friday 10th November was a Special Awards Ceremony at St Aidans.
Jessie was presented with her awards, along with other students and prefects
and there was a morning tea afterwards. Luckily one of my work colleagues was
also there as he has a daughter in Jessie’s year and he drove me into work. The
following Monday evening was Speech Night
at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in the city. This was a nice evening with
a couple of musical interludes but it was largely a repeat of the Awards
Ceremony at school and we wondered if the two events could have been combined into
one.
We went to see the new movie Murder on the
Orient Express on Sunday, which was great. Matt and Katie love murder mysteries
and watch lots together. The next weekend the Australian Girls’ Choir was
singing at the Lighting of the Christmas
Tree in King George Square. This is a big deal with the Brisbane Lord Mayor
attending and around 5000 people packed into the square. We dropped her off in
time for the sound check and went Christmas shopping in the city for a while
and then had dinner in The Pig and Whistle right in the middle of the square in
front of the stage. We decided to stay in the bar and watch her from there with
a glass of wine which was very civilised and we had a great view. The
pre-lighting entertainment was a bit lame with acrobatic elves, a visit from
Santa and a slightly disturbing snow queen juggler who would have been more at
home in a Burlesque show. The Lord Mayor turned on the lights and then the
girls sang Christmas carols. I was actually quite impressed with the lights on
the tree. They were very cool with flashing sequences and patterns. The girls
were great as well.
On Monday 27th November, Jessie
headed off for a St Aidan’s Leadership
Conference at Noosa. It was a three-day trip for her whole year group. The
girls were in self-catering rooms of four. They had a really good time. That
week Matthew got his university results;
he got a 7, 6, 6 and 4 (out of 7) with 4 being a pass. He was quite pleased
with the results. The 4 was in Written Chinese which was a very hard test
apparently. He has done so much better than I did at Uni. I tell myself that is
because I didn’t ever study (which is pretty much true).
I went out for lunch on Thursday with the
committee members of the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat. I had
been at a site meeting in Caloundra in the morning and had to rush back to the
lunch. It was a long lunch and I got back to the office at 6:30pm. I went straight
on to see a band “The Church” with
John and Shaun. I did try to tell Katie I was going to church for Christmas
carols but she didn’t buy it. The venue was near my office so we had dinner at
a nearby pub. Another great 80’s band cashing in on ageing codgers reliving
their youth but it was a fun evening.
December The next day I had another longish
lunch with an ex-colleague. The Christmas/end-of year Silly Season has started.
That night we went to Mel Trebilcock’s 50th
birthday party. They live just down the road. The theme was “smart and
glamorous casual”. I wasn’t really sure what that meant so just dressed as
normal. They had really gone all out. The fairy lights were amazing and their
garden looked quite magical. They had a steamed bun food truck serving
fantastic gyoza and pork/chicken dumplings and their two boys were serving
drinks at the bar, pouring very large measures. They also had a fantastic
singer who played for hours. We knew most of the people there so we had a great
evening and wobbled home after midnight. It was a bit of a slow day the next
day. We were just starting to feel 100% again, then we headed out for dinner
with our group of BBC parents. We went to Tocco Italiano which is the
restaurant that Matthew works at. He waited on us that evening. The service was
excellent. After dinner Katie invited everyone back to our house where she had
made Tiramisu for desert and we washed it down with a lovely chocolate rum
liqueur.
It was Matthew’s
19th birthday on 8th December. It is now exactly
seven years since we arrived here in Brisbane after our three-month journey
from Hale, Cheshire. It doesn’t feel very long ago, but a lot has happened in
that time and the kids have grown up so much. We went to The Hundred Acre Bar
to celebrate Matt’s birthday. It was a really nice night. Actually it is not
often that we can get all four of us together now as the kids’ social lives are
so busy that we have to plan ahead.
We went to a long lunch at our friends the
Pennings on Saturday 10th December. There were nine families and
everyone brought a food contribution. Lunch started at 12:30pm and went all
afternoon, with kids turning up randomly for food at different times. There was
a slight interruption when there was a storm warning predicting large hale
about 3pm and we had to get sober people to move any cars under cover. Lunch
finished at 7pm when we ordered pizza for dinner and we got home at 9:30pm.
The next day we went to Mum and Dad’s new farm
Hilltop for an early Christmas with my sister and her family. We had a lovely
day – a big Christmas feast, lots of presents, a tour of the new farm for those
who hadn’t been there before and a fun time trying to fly kites on the front
lawn (not much wind!) It was a really great day. Mum and Dad have got their
property looking really good and are very settled.
In the next few days Jessie’s Christmas will
come early, when she finally gets her braces off after nearly three years!! She is counting the days. On Thursday Molly goes
to Hilltop for her farm Christmas holiday and then on Sat 16 December we head to
Canada for this year’s White Christmas in the snow.
Our thoughts are with
you this Christmas together with our wish that all your New Years and
Christmases will be happy and the future for all of you will be full of bright
and shining things.
Derek, Katie, Matt, Jessie & Molly
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