This post is going to be rather like my life at the moment, a hectic scramble from place to place as I try to keep up with all the various curricular and extra curricular activities of the boys, my own interests, preparation for Christmas and generally coping for a couple of weeks on my own here whilst Richard is back in the UK for the Joint Ministerial Council. So rather than a single coherent theme or topic, there is instead an update of as many of our activities as I can remember over the past couple of weeks. I had intended to do separate blogs on many of these but #lifehappens.
Chronologically the earliest and something I had meant to do a separate post on was Davide and Marinella’s wedding which we attended a couple of weeks ago. Davide works with Richard in the policy unit and is the economist for the Falkland Islands. As you can guess from their names, they are Italian and Marinella is a chef by training who has set up a home business making amazing pasta.
Marriage rules are very relaxed in the Falkland Islands. Subject only to the land-owner’s permission, you can get married anywhere you want. You can also be married by any person you want, provided they can satisfy the Attorney General that they are of sufficiently good standing in the local community – ie not the local drunk/convicted of serious offences etc. So this particular wedding took place on Bertha’s beach near a colony of gentoo penguins. The location was a little blustery, but when you can have penguins wandering around to the side of your wedding ceremony, what does a little wind matter? The land owner had also given permission for the wedding guests to drive past the car park to the ceremony point, which meant some fun off-roading in a convoy driving along the beach.
For the boys, the wedding bit was nowhere near as interesting as an ability to indulge a new pastime for them in the Falklands, finding dead things. It’s a pastime that seems to be enthusiastically participated in by all children we come across. At the wedding there was one other boy from Alexander’s year group at school plus the nephew of the bride. All four boys spent most of their time trying to disinter a dead sheep from the beach that still had quite a large amount of its wool and skin on it (don’t worry, as I’m well aware this blog may be shown to children not accustomed to finding dead animals, no photos of the dead sheep are about to appear on the blog). This has since been followed by finding various dead birds on Kidney Island including a dead gentoo penguin and finding a dead baby bird in the playground at school. At least they’ll come back to the UK with an appreciation of the realities of nature.
Anyway the wedding was beautiful and the reception excellent, not least because the bride insisted on catering it herself and we enjoyed probably the best tortellini and pannacotta I have ever tasted.
Skipping forward as I have already blogged about Kidney Island and our visit there, sporting activities have featured fairly heavily over the past two weeks. At a school level, there has been the swimming gala to remember kit for (this was a #mummywin as I managed to remember everything including an extra towel for the right day, which wasn’t the normal swimming day). Then there has been the weekly karate and kickboxing, for which I have been very grateful for the friendly support network here who have willingly baby-sat for me during Richard’s absence. It’s been grading time for karate and kickboxing. Alexander has opted to wait until April for his grading, but I duly took the yellow belt test for kickboxing and Ptolemy has taken his exam for karate and we’re waiting until next week to find out our results. I also managed to complete a 10km run for charity last Saturday. It was more challenging than I thought it would be, partly because it was a small group of runners, the best of whom set off at a much faster pace than I normally would, so I found myself running the first half at a speed I didn’t think I could do. The second half was more measured and significantly so when I fell over about 2km from the end. A week on and the most impressive grazes to my knee have yet to heal, so running has been off the cards so far.
Closing this blog’s melange of events and topics, the start of December means Christmas is drawing ever closer. It also means the round of pre-Christmas events starts. Saturday 1st December was the Advent Market at the Cathedral (baking required and delivered, various bits of plastic and sweets won). Tuesday 4th December saw the Beavers, Cubs and Scouts Christmas coffee evening (more baking delivered, more bits of plastic and rather too many more sweets won). Next week we have in addition to the usual round of work Christmas parties (to which husbands/wives/partners are typically invited), there are the school plays for FS2 and for the rest of the infant and junior school, a Christmas tree festival and the Community Challenge Christmas concert at which the Beavers and Cubs are singing. The week will end with the Cathedral Nativity service, which this year I’m helping to organise – think traditional tea-towels on heads and tinsel – and the Cathedral’s nine lessons in carols (yet more baking needed).
So life is just a bit hectic right now but so long as there are plenty of mince pies and everyone ends up in the right costume at the right time, it’ll all be fine. And even if I miss those targets, it’s still going to be Christmas soon – our first, and quite probably last, in the Southern hemisphere.
Five penguins and us 