Snow Smiles

Posted on June 29, 2006

Ski Bunny Goes South

Posted on June 28, 2006

Last year, under some pressure, I took up skiing. Well, it’s probably overstating it to say I ‘took it up’ - I hauled myself into a ski suit and endured it for three days. My only motivation was that I wanted our kids to enjoy the snow and become reasonably proficent while they were still young.

The kids took to it beautifully and I did eventually warm to it, hesitantly. 

But, as it happened all the planning, all the lessons and practice and the agonising expense was made worthwhile in the last hour.

In the last hour of our last day I went up on the beginner slopes chairlift with my 8 year old and his snowboard and 12 year old with her skis and we came down the mountain together. It was a beautiful thing - like a dream come true. They were so thrilled with my progress and that we could achieve that together. Well, a cold little tear slid down my cheek.

So we did it again and again until the chairlift closed. Then we had hot, fresh doughnuts - made while we waited - and we ate them with frozen fingers and it was bliss!

So now we’re headin’ off to do it all again. Back in 10 days - see yah!

 

I don’t get it!

Posted on June 26, 2006

As an end of term treat for my 13 year old daughter - who is very keen on Shakespeare - I booked tickets for the Bell Shakespeare Company performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Sydney Opera House. What a disappointment that was! Now, I’m no expert on theatre or Shakespeare, and I don’t doubt these people know what they’re doing, but our POV as your standard punter was disappointed disbelief. 

It was a modern interpretation which I don’t really have issue with - if there’s a point. If there was we missed it. The set was just one big dark wall and the players all dressed in very bad clothes from the 70’s - that alone made it very hard to take them seriously. I mean Romeo in a synthetic blue strings singlet and a blue vinyl bomber jacket - pleeeaaase!

Romeo and Juliet is a beautiful tragedy but with the clothes and comic interpretation of the two families it was more a comedy of errors. The Montagues and the Capulet gangs wore board-shorts and carried skateboards - where was the menace? The parents - supposedly the two most powerful families in Verona - were 70’s sitcom caricatures in maroon and lime green crimplene suits. The only frightening aspect was the worry of what they would be wearing next.

If I’d seen this performed by a local theatre the best I could have said is that they were jolly good at remembering their lines but, to me, impassioned prose sounded like a rant.

Perhaps it has been done so well in film, who can forget Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 film version - I was 13 years old when I saw it and cried so much I had to leave before the end!

We’re no experts but the Bell Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet bored us both to tears.

Baby Genius

Posted on June 22, 2006

Had my final writing class with the Year 6 class (12 years old) for the term today - God love ‘em. They’ve worked harder than they ever thought they would on their writing, having worked on the same story for weeks! Once they got over the initial shock of having to revise they have been totally into it.

It’s been really interesting doing the one-on-one mentoring and really talking through their stories with them and suddenly they see plot holes and time line problems. At this stage a lot of the stories tend to happen in one day including houses being sold, people dying and having funerals etc, so it’s good for them to understand the mechanics of that.

The most exciting part of today’s session was that I asked them to each take a few minutes to write down their writing strengths and weaknesses and what they had learned from working on their stories.

One by one they stood up and were just so clear about their issues. Some said they were good with plot but struggled with description, some felt their dialogue was good but their plots unravelled and they got bogged in the details.

But when they talked about what they had learned - I thought I was going to burst into tears!

The one boy who had really struggled very unwillingly with his writing and was waaay behind on each deadline said he learned to just keep writing no matter how late you’re running. And the absolute best was a boy who comes from a Russian family and had previously said they didn’t have any English books at home. He read out his strengths and weakness and then looked up and said in a slightly shocked voice ’What I learned…is that I’m a writer.’

And he is - he’s fantastic! I feel teary just thinking about it.

Working Without Nets

Posted on June 21, 2006

I’ve packed in my paying writing job - good money in the corporate world but gee, the vibe leaves something to be desired. So once all the loose ends are tied up this week I’ll be at something of a loose end myself - and looking forward to it.

I set myself a deadline of having the first draft of the latest book finished by June 30th and that ain’t nowhere near happening, so now there are no excuses for not getting in there and getting it done. It’s either that or find another corporate writing job - no way Jose!

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