EWein2412

As in Sara is having to play field hockey, since there's no quidditch team at Imperial Academy. I have actually had to buy a hockey stick (hopefully now that the first half term is over I will not have to BUY so much stuff). I keep telling her that she may even grow to like it once she works out how to hit the ball. She, like her parents, is not what my brother used to call "sportious."

Mark is on his midterm break and Sara is not, so he and I went to meet her for lunch and wandered around town afterwards. It really has got to be the most Hogwartian location for a school EVAH. The place where you buy the uniforms locally is even more Land-That-Time-Forgot than the one here in Perth; it is a local department store called Valentine's (yes, that's it's real name), where you basically go in to the separate departments and ASK for what items you want, as they are all stored in drawers and cupboards. Next door along the main street is the local sweet shop where you can watch them making fudge through the plate glass windows in the back. This place is called Gordon & Durward, again, no lie but that's it's real name, and they actually do sell a selection of handmade chocolate frogs and hedgehogs and spiders. The schoolkids do not shop here. They call it "the expensive sweet shop" and buy their goo in "the Tuckie," which is Their Shop. It is the size of a broom cupboard and is situated across from the school gates; basically it makes its living selling hot soup and penny candy to the young Jedis. (oy, I am getting my imaginary schools confused now.)

It is two weeks since my birthday, and also two weeks since Mark's midterm holidays began (they end on Monday). I had an excellent birthday weekend, with a long, elegant lunch at the Dunkeld Hilton, originally an Edwardian country house which stands amid gorgeous parkland right on the edge of the Tay--of course it was pouring with rain that day, but that made it all the cosier. In the evening we had a mini-bonfire on the patio at home. We have bought a fire basket. So now we can sit in the summer house with the fire basket burning just outside the door, and toast marshmallows, and it's like being at camp.

The day after my birthday the festivities continued with a long afternoon of lunch and antiquing with Jane Yolen, Debby Harris and Sara--Sara was terribly shy and sat with her nose in The Devil's Arithmetic the whole way through lunch. It would have been rude except that Jane had written the book, so actually it was kind of sweet.

The past two weeks' inactivity is threefold, due to: 1) the arrival, as a birthday present, of a Sony Vaio Netbook. Whee-ooo! It has taken a while to get it up and running to my satisfaction but I am getting used to the smaller keyboard now. 2) Obsessive work on a book proposal that needs to be done asap; and 3) Mark's midterm holiday (and Sara's started yesterday, but I have today clear because Mark is on a canoeing course). This is some of the stuff that Mark and I have done together: picnicked at Scone Palace; climbed the 11th century Abernethy Round Tower; lay in the sun in Drummond Castle Gardens; bicycled along the beach at Tentsmuir and saw a seal and climbed on the WWII defenses; and none of it is further than a half hour drive away from our house (actually, you can see Scone Palace from my bedroom window, how about that).

I want to sing the praises of and recommend Jane Kurtz's new book, Trouble, illustrated by Durga Bernhard. It is another exuberant dual language English / Amharic picture book produced in conjunction with Ethiopia Reads. You can order it directly through them for $15 plus $5 shipping and handling; they do a nice service where if you send a gift list along with $20 per name they ship them on the date you specify along with a special gift note. The contact address is books [AT] ethiopiareads.org.

More soon.