For lovers of grandchildren’s recitals, this is a season of
plenty. Friday morning we went to
our grand-daughter Madeleine’s band recital. Each Grade 6 French immersion child studying clarinet in the
Regina Catholic school system played the same number. It’s called ‘Minuet’ and the same pianist accompanied each
child. The children acquitted
themselves with varying degrees of proficiency; the pianist was very good, but
my grand-daughter noticed that by the end of the first morning the pianist’s
smile had grown tight and there were many, many Grade 6 French immersion
clarinet students still to come down the pike. Madeleine got a first in her class; I hope the pianist got
the biggest martini ever made.
Saturday we went to the strawberry fair – the major fund-raiser for our cathedral. A portion of the funds comes from the sale of flats of strawberries driven in from a place where the weather is kind. The weather is never kind when the strawberries reach their destination in front of St. Paul’s. Saturday, we had snow/mixed with freezing rain. Saskatchewan strawberry fair weather.
At the white elephant sale, I suffered an attack of the 70’s and bought blue mountain pottery. Proving that there is a caring God, someone beat me to the clay cooker, the fondue pot and the collection of kitchen witches.
Saturday afternoon we went to the Met HD production of Armida. Six tenors, Renee Fleming and New York fries. Transcendent!
Saturday night, Madeleine’s dance class performed for an inner city fund-raiser. She wore makeup and was incredibly mature. By the time she and her sister got back to our house for the night, the makeup had worn off and so had the maturity. We watched the Food Channel and the kids ate bad for them cereal, as they frequently do on Saturday nights with us.
Sunday night we had dinner at the home of our former bishop and his wife. A couple of years ago, they moved out of their large gorgeous family home into a trendy condo over a store downtown. They invited us to their housewarming and I repaid their kindness by using their condo as the scene for a particularly nasty murder in “The Nesting Dolls”. The moral to this story has something to do with the wisdom of allowing a writer to cross your threshold, but you’ve probably already figured that out.