MORNING HAS BROKEN

Dear Alice…

This morning I went all English. I began with a McVities Digestive biscuit and a cup of PG Tips in bed. Later I had a poached egg on toast with Marmite, bacon and Worcester sauce before a final slice of toast topped with Frank Coopers marmalade. Thankfully all these products are readily available in Sydney; were they not, I’m not sure what I’d do. You’d probably be posting me food parcels for a start. Having lived in England for thirty years, it’s not unreasonable to develop certain tastes and, like my accent, I have found these remain hard-wired even after twenty-two years of living as an ex-pat. Your brothers however much prefer Vegemite to Marmite and think Worcester sauce to be the most disgusting way to kill good bacon. How are your Australian taste buds going living in the Motherland? I can’t believe there’s any Australian staples you’ll be craving for… Lamingtons maybe?

So Elliott and his school team are through to the grand final of the NSW Theatre Sports Competition. We’ve booked our tickets at the Enmore Theatre and are all really looking forward to attending. He’s out again today, acting in a school movie. He modestly enlightened us last night that he and a few others have been selected to perform in the final of the 2010 Shakespeare Festival next week. What with this and the lead in the Year 10 play, he’s a busy boy. On the downside though, he once again blew out his mobile phone bill which came in this month at $95 instead of the anticipated $30. One call was $45 alone, mobile to mobile for an hour… err, hello! The home phone would have costed him zip! Must be the testosterone swirling around his body at the moment and squeezing out of his top lip that switched off his brain.

The Tris monkey had his football cancelled for a third week in a row yesterday despite the sun shining all day. At this rate the new Skins will be too small before he actually gets to wear them! The pitches are very waterlogged from all the rain we’ve had. It’s a good job the World Cup is not being held in Sydney as all the grounds would be shut! He’s very taken with the new Apple iPad and has been playing games and reading on it. Incredibly he actually asks to go to bed so he can read his book The Homework Machine on it. I too am reading on it, the US magazine, Wired, and given the digital version is also interactive (including the ads) it makes for a much better reading experience than it’s paper counterpart. As the Editor of Wired puts it: “The irony that ‘Wired’, a magazine founded to chronicle the digital revolution, has traditionally come to you each month on the smooshed atoms of dead trees is not lost on us…” Personally, I think the death knell is sounding loud and clear for printed magazines and newspapers. They will rapidly go the way film did once digital cameras became cheap abundant and seemingly the norm. Maybe printed matter will take a bit longer, as there will still be a demand from the older generations (Grandma would use a digital camera but not an iPad) but mark my words… the writing is on the ‘virtual’ wall.

Teacher Mum has applied to speak at some conference or other. She has put together several workshops and published a second blog, Techie Brekkie so we’ll see how she goes. Last week she presented to all the K–12 staff at school about ‘Blogging in the classroom’ which was very well received apparently. The Headmistress wants to meet with her next week to discuss the subject further in fact. Techie Brekkie is basically a blog of Mum’s fortnightly breakfast sessions she presents to the staff, on the use of Web 2.0 tools in the classroom. The aim is to teach, encourage and help them grow as teachers. Her buzz word this year is ‘collaboration’. It would be an understatement to just say she is ‘enjoying’ this new found passion. Needless to say, I support her with this journey of discovery one hundred percent. I like to think she still needs me from time to time (technically that is), but her knowledge of all things digital is progressing at an exciting rate of knots. Thankfully though, she still can’t play football, so I’m always the parent of choice for Sunday afternoon entertainment by Tristan. Mum’s job description clearly ought to read so much more than ‘classroom teacher’ these days, but this is what she enjoys most of course. So, she continues on, doing far too much for too little pay and often getting very tired as a result. But she’s an amazing woman (something I’d worked out within hours of meeting her) and so perseveres with this conundrum… for the time being. She misses you… as of course do I.

Love : D