Nine year old SecondBorn is a keen drummer, and a coerced, conscript cellist. The dynamics have been difficult.
Year One in Kenya, when the only cello teacher in the whole country had just departed. Continue your lessons with your mother (a one-time, lapsed violinist). Not popular with mother or son.
Year Two in Kenya, when a highly respected teacher of woodwind at the conservatoire had himself reached the benchmark level in cello to teach (?probably around grade three). Take cello lessons in school, but bear in mind the teacher is a little diffident about performing himself. Not popular.
Year Three in Kenya, ThresholdMum's networking ability has developed to necessary Kenyan standards. A US cello teacher has moved to Nairobi from up-country. He's dynamic, skilled, enthusiastic. He has a gap. But he works in Langata - an hour's drive from us using the short-cuts - fine in daylight hours. But the lesson is 530 to 630, and its not safe to drive back through the slums after dark. And the night of the lesson is the night of my weekly Girls Night Out at which pims are drunk and the giggles are raucous. Sigh. And the first lesson coincided with the Nairobi International Trade Show, notorious for dire traffic, and even worse when the Presidential cavalcade and outriders snarl the route.
'Oooh look, what are those cars with flashing lights?' Sigh.
We left the cello lesson at 630. We got home at 910 pm, having adopted the Kenyan response to traffic snarl ups, driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway, and off-road, the car straddling the drainage ditch between the wheels. (Get you, ThresholdMum, you're adapting!) Our GradeOne Musical Genius asleep in the back. Not popular.
So we're back in the UK for a whistlestop tour around potential schools for FirstBorn. Which will be the subject of many posts to come.
'Lets rethink.'
So this weekend, think of a small, well-filled, black hire car driving back, over the Severn Bridge, along the M4 to Heathrow. Cadbury Christmas advent calendars for a well-organised expat friend. Waitrose Christmas cake for us. Lego. Books.
Think of FirstBorn, in on the secret, primed with a list of well-chosen jokes, apt to tickle the humour of a nine year old boy and to distract in extremis. And think of SecondBorn wedged alongside a large cardboard box. Will we distract his attention sufficiently, all the way along the M4, enough that he doesn't wonder:
'Why this big box?' Even
'What does this big box say on its side?'
Join us in hoping that the customs officers don't require that ThresholdMum and Tom unpack the electronic drumkit (and headphones) before the pre-Christmas boy.
'I say I say I say...'
Year One in Kenya, when the only cello teacher in the whole country had just departed. Continue your lessons with your mother (a one-time, lapsed violinist). Not popular with mother or son.
Year Two in Kenya, when a highly respected teacher of woodwind at the conservatoire had himself reached the benchmark level in cello to teach (?probably around grade three). Take cello lessons in school, but bear in mind the teacher is a little diffident about performing himself. Not popular.
Year Three in Kenya, ThresholdMum's networking ability has developed to necessary Kenyan standards. A US cello teacher has moved to Nairobi from up-country. He's dynamic, skilled, enthusiastic. He has a gap. But he works in Langata - an hour's drive from us using the short-cuts - fine in daylight hours. But the lesson is 530 to 630, and its not safe to drive back through the slums after dark. And the night of the lesson is the night of my weekly Girls Night Out at which pims are drunk and the giggles are raucous. Sigh. And the first lesson coincided with the Nairobi International Trade Show, notorious for dire traffic, and even worse when the Presidential cavalcade and outriders snarl the route.
'Oooh look, what are those cars with flashing lights?' Sigh.
We left the cello lesson at 630. We got home at 910 pm, having adopted the Kenyan response to traffic snarl ups, driving the wrong way down the dual carriageway, and off-road, the car straddling the drainage ditch between the wheels. (Get you, ThresholdMum, you're adapting!) Our GradeOne Musical Genius asleep in the back. Not popular.
So we're back in the UK for a whistlestop tour around potential schools for FirstBorn. Which will be the subject of many posts to come.
'Lets rethink.'
So this weekend, think of a small, well-filled, black hire car driving back, over the Severn Bridge, along the M4 to Heathrow. Cadbury Christmas advent calendars for a well-organised expat friend. Waitrose Christmas cake for us. Lego. Books.
Think of FirstBorn, in on the secret, primed with a list of well-chosen jokes, apt to tickle the humour of a nine year old boy and to distract in extremis. And think of SecondBorn wedged alongside a large cardboard box. Will we distract his attention sufficiently, all the way along the M4, enough that he doesn't wonder:
'Why this big box?' Even
'What does this big box say on its side?'
Join us in hoping that the customs officers don't require that ThresholdMum and Tom unpack the electronic drumkit (and headphones) before the pre-Christmas boy.
'I say I say I say...'
I'd been wondering who on earth was going to buy Waitrose's Christmas cake in October - and now I know!
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