The Country Mice

Homeboy was invited to participate in a musical ‘Masterclass’ yesterday, an environment where one plays before and is critiqued by one’s peers.

I dropped him off at his teacher’s riverside house, mentally girding my loins for the ah, feedback I would receive on my return.

My lad didn’t seem particularly peeved when I picked him up four hours later, and over the course of the bedtime routine I gleaned that the class had begun with a chocolate fondue, punctuated by four-cheese tortellini, fruit and marshmallow kebobs and oatmeal cookies. I understood a great deal of musical study had also, in fact, transpired. After all, what else could one do for four hours?

I’ve just received this photograph from his teacher, requesting some feedback on the success of the evening.

Oh that every music teacher understood her charges this well!

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The academic year is closing in on our little household but not before a massive tidal wave of activity threatens to consume us all.

Homeboy recently returned from a week aboard the Pacific Grace, a 107-foot fishing schooner, similar to the famous Bluenose on our Canadian dime.

Every year, the Grade 7 and 8 students of Homeboy’s school raise funds to spend a week on this boat, plying the seas between Vancouver Island and the mainland, an area known as the Georgia Strait. This strait is dotted with small islands home to wealthy Alberta retirees and hippie types who want nothing to do with wealth and oil. Somehow the two parties manage to co-exist.

I digress.

The strait is calm and therefore an easy journey for landlubbers first finding their way to the sea.

The sailing week is run by a group called SALTS — sail and life training society — is one of those great leadership training opportunities, building relational and physical confidence in young people through sail training, shipboard life and other enviable activities.

“You’re a good cook, Mum, but this food was amazing.”

Note to self: Exhaust child with physical labour, cold temperatures and night watches  prior to feeding.

Homeboy returned to us with a mouthful of nautical terms, a commitment to earn money so he can return for a summer program (Have I got some chores for you!) and as a taller and tanned young man with a perma-grin on his sleepy face.

These pictures are the few images he brought back with him. I suspect he was too busy eating all that amazing food to bother with photography!

That’s our boy in the green sweater, just about in the middle. Don’t they look nautical?

This pic was snapped by one of the parents from our school, someone who just happened to take his boat out for a spin in a certain area on a certain day.

You can run, kids, but you can’t hide!

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Part of the Grade 5 school curriculum requires study of the role of Canada’s government. Thus the Princess has been coming home with queries and comments regarding minority governments, Stephen Harper (hmmm, two Stephen Harper mentions in the last three days…), the legislature and our beleaguered premier, Christy Clark.

So what’s a group of homelearners to do? Why, organize a trip to our province’s capital city, of course!

Thus a couple of weeks ago a gang of us boarded the Big Ferry (as it’s known around here) to Nanaimo (on the eastern side of Vancouver Island, for those of you who’ve forgotten your B.C. geography) and then drove an extraordinarily pleasant two hours of winding coastal highway southward to Victoria.

We all packed into the James Bay Inn, spitting distance from the legislative buildings and the little white and purple house where I rented for two years. For all the children, it was beautiful springtime glory. For me, it was old home week.

I had a la-di-dah lunch in the legislative dining room with Sue Hammell, for whom I worked in the late 90s, I had lunch with some other ex-politicos, I had coffee with a distant cousin, I drove past the property where a dear elderly aunt lived, and I walked and walked and walked on Victoria’s lovely flowered streets.

Oh, there was a bit of academic activity as well — visits to the B.C. museum, to the legislative buildings, a little horseback riding (okay, not entirely academic but highly anticipated by the girls in the group) and a little bit of exploration.

** A bit of note about the photo: In the springtime here, boulevards lined with cherry trees (some of them a long-ago gift from Japan) sprinkle their spent blossoms like pink snowflakes. The show goes on for a week or so and pink snowdrifts build up, begging to be sent back upwards toward the sky.

It’s a very pretty sight.

Everyone needs a field trip to Victoria, I’d say!

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