SCHOOL'S OUT FOR SUMMER.

As we head into the last week before the kids' autumn half term we thought we really should put up the posts about the summer holidays. 

School finished for the UK academic year on July 13th and was followed by 8 weeks of summer holidays. The kids went back on September 10th with William in year 6 and Aisha in year 9. Now in week three of school, there are only two more weeks until the next holidays !! Scary stuff!

Both the kids had very good reports with glowing comments. Aisha had one teacher in particular who is apparently careful with his praise but who wrote in her report:

"Aisha is one of the brightest students I have taught. Her reasoning, analysis and knowledge are all well above average. I think I will carry with me her comments on modern society and 'two spirited people' from Native America for a very long time. They were mature, well thought out and very well explained." 

We wish we had heard her comments, made during a week of exams and while Sally was in hospital. When she came home that day she was excited about the discussion but couldn't really remember what she had said, other than the whole class listened to her for about 5 minutes!

In William's report his teacher wrote;

"He has shown tremendous ability during our poetry lessons, his poems are witty and creative. William's reading and spelling have improved tremendously. I have been impressed with his abilities and commitment. He displays natural leadership qualities and will be an effective leader. William has natural athletic abilities and demonstrates excellent co-ordination and control."

While all that is very good, we do wonder just how they will fair once they return to Australia with the relatively new national curriculum and its more South East Asian & indigenous focus. Mark has downloaded what is available of the national curriculum and has delighted the kids by giving them a few of the yr 6/7 tests he used in Canberra during the holidays - just to see how they go.

Bad  Daddy !!

The summer's break was always going to be fitted around the various Olympic & Paralympic events we had tickets for. Apart from Aisha's birthday trip to Paris at the very start of the holidays we did not leave these 'green and pleasant lands'. We found that once we had sorted ourselves out after Sally's 'all clear' it was pretty much impossible to book what we wanted to do in the two weeks we had free between the games. Mark even went down to the local travel agent to see what package deals were available. Perhaps fortunately there was very little at all. Instead, we did a variety of day trips and weekends away. We will make sure we have next summer sorted way in advance.

So what did we do ?
Not long before school finished Mark's Auntie Mary took us back to the restaurant she took us to, and where the kids first met her, not long after we first arrived in London in the cold and snow of December 2010. This time it was an early celebration of Aisha's birthday. Mary has had several incarnations of the kids' chocolate cake that they ended up making for the 'bake off' competition. This time, the day after William's birthday party, he brought along some of the cake he made for his own birthday party for her to have.

Apart from the pleasure of a good meal and walking around St John's Wood, William found something a little special to interest him.

As part of her recuperation Sally was doing gradually longer walks around the area. On one walk she went to the local St Pancras and Islington Cemetery where apparently up to a million people are buried, more than any other cemetery in the UK. The cemetery has been accepting guests from around 1854. Very overgrown in parts, it has memorials ranging from from simple wooden crosses reminiscent of paupers graves to the massive 'Mond' Mausoleum, all of which are in varying degrees of dilapidation. It is hugely atmospheric and reminiscent of the more well known Highgate cemetery. More recently she and Mark went there together and explored more fully the overgrown sections which reminded Mark of the old Hammer horror movie scenes.

William has been having private guitar lessons each week for about a year now. Through Ollie, his teacher, he has learned some more up to date songs. He had been working on a combination of three riffs - 'Smells like team spirit', 'Smoke on the water' and 'Teenage kicks'. He has come a LONG way since he started guitar when he was 6 and we no longer have battles to get him to practise.  As a result, William performed on a school electric guitar in front of his junior school. We actually prefer this music as he plays it on his acoustic guitar, but reckon he did a great job. Click below to have a look.

Many people see a lot of Mark in William and Sally in Aisha. Aisha has a talent for drama...not sure where she gets that from. About a week in advance we found out she was in the end of year drama night, performing the poem 'Hiawatha' with her class mates.



The following week, Aisha starred in the senior school's music performance! Apart from a re-run of the piano performance she did while on crutches (Click here for Aisha's injury + piano performance on crutches.) Aisha played beat box and xylophone with two groups of friends. Having resumed her trumpet this year, she also played in the opening and closing numbers with the small school jazz band (their only female).  The band all but stole the show with their exuberant performances, leaving Mark & Sally amazed to see their girl front & centre & rocking on! Click below to have a look.

Below is part of the the impromptu encore that 'Aisha's band' did after the performance mentioned above. It is about 30 seconds long and shows the fun she had.

After returning from Paris, the week of July 20th through to the start of the Olympics, we enjoyed some uncharacteristically excellent, indeed hot weather with clear blue skies. We hadn't seen this kind of weather since the fabled and much lamented Spring of 2011. In fact several nights were so warm it was difficult to sleep, even with all the windows open. Our house has air conditioning downstairs. We aren't sure why. We almost put it on in late May last year when the temperatures reached 32, but didn't. With Aisha coming home from camp we decided we would put it on, not the least to be able to say that we had it on at least once in our time here.

Late July weather.

Just one day after returning from Paris, Aisha went on her long planned and much anticipated summer guide camp, mentioned above. With all the rain of much of the summer that far ( officially the wettest summer ever recorded which followed the driest spring in 100 years ! click here for the BBC story on the weather) it had been touch and go whether the camp would go ahead. As it turned out, rather than battling puddles and mud, she and the other 15 girls sweated through the five nights under canvas.

As part of the camp she bivouaced on her own. She had to find her own camp site, set up a tent and fend for herself for one night. Meant to be a bit of a challenge, Aisha, (who went on her first two night girl guide camp at the tender age of 6 !) said it was a doddle - except for the breakfast the next morning. Having done a fair bit of cooking with Mark, Aisha confidently took the one and only egg she had been given and, having set up her gas stove and fry pan, went to crack the egg open. She  tells us she whacked the egg a little too hard on the edge of the fry pan though, resulting in almost all of the egg running down the outside of the pan and onto the grass. William assures us he would NEVER make such a mistake.

Mark went out on the third day of the camp to help with transporting girls to the canoeing activity and found Aisha in a ....particular frame of mind. Maybe it was the heat.

Apart from being HOT, Aisha also did some of the usual camping things, always in her pink Australian girl guide hat.

Not grumpy, she just can't see without her glasses. 

   

While Aisha was at camp the rest of us went to the Hatfield house battle proms. See our post on it here.

A week after Aisha returned from camp and a few days after Sally went back to work, Mark took the kids to Bristol. They went mainly to see the restored SS Great Britain which was launched in 1834 from the very slipway where she now sits as a museum piece in an impressive dry dock. She was built by Islamabard Kingdom Brunel and was the largest vessel of her time. While she was not the first iron steam ship nor the first to use a screw propeller, she was the first to combine the two. She was also the first iron steamship to cross the Atlantic. She later went on to ply the England – Australia emigrant route for thirty years from 1832 becoming known as the most reliable ship to do so. During that time she served at the Crimean war and during the Indian mutiny.

Despite her glorious beginnings by 1882 she had been converted to a coal transport ship and was converted to sail. In 1886 a fire on board left her so badly damaged she was sold as a storage hulk, became a warehouse and then a quarantine ship until 1937. Then she was towed to Sparrow Cove, near Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands, scuttled and left a rusting hulk on the shore. Once she was found and identified in 1970 a long process began to salvage and repair her. Eventually, 100 years to the day after she was launched, she sailed back into Bristol harbour with The Duke of Edinburgh on board. The ship has been largely restored and is a 'floating' museum. It does a particularly good job of recreating the living conditions on board for all classes of passenger and the crew.  The recreations of the kitchens and some of the food served was certainly a revelation. 

Anyone for porpoise ?

The kids said the dining rooms made them think of the Titanic.

Dad....I'm stuck.

Will has had enough !

A few days later we all went to Salisbury to see the cathedral and to stop in on Stonehenge so Sally could see it. 

The Salisbury Cathedral has the tallest spire in England, the world's oldest working clock and the best preserved of four original copies of the Magna Carta. A lot in just one building. 

Salisbury Cathedral was started in 1220 as a consequence of the ongoing deterioration of the nearby Old Sarum Cathedral. Built in 1092, Old Sarum was used as a base by William the Conqueror. The Cathedral was damaged by a storm not long after it was consecrated. The community that lived there later suffered from its exposed position and lack of fresh water. Old Sarum was eventually abandoned in favour of modern day Salisbury.

The ruins of the old Sarum Cathedral in the background. 

According to legend, the Bishop of Old Sarum shot an arrow in the direction he wanted the new cathedral built. The arrow hit a deer and the deer finally died in the place where Salisbury Cathedral now stands. The land was owned by the wealthy but ironically named Bishop Richard Poore.

Once started, the main body of the Salisbury cathedral was completed in just 38 years. The 123 metre spire was added in 1320. The spire and its tower added an extra 6,500 tonnes to the weight of the building. A variety of additional supports were added to prevent the roof collapsing. Christopher Wren added further reinforcing beams in 1668. Despite all these added measures the large supporting pillars at the corners of the spire bend inwards under the stress. 

Been there, done that.

The Salisbury clock dates from about 1386 and is possibly the oldest working modern clock in the world. 

The clock has no face as all clocks of that age rang out the hours on a bell. It was originally located in a bell tower that was demolished in 1792. The clock was moved to the Cathedral Tower where it worked until 1884. The clock was then placed in storage and, amazingly, forgotten until it was rediscovered in 1929, in an attic of the cathedral. It was repaired and restored to working order in 1956.

Salisbury is a fairly nice little town which has a pub that has been operating sine 1411, a school where 'Lord of The Flies' author William Golding taught and some lovely hanging baskets.

On the way home we stopped in at Amesbury Abbey. While not much bigger than a small parish church it was was a Benedictine abbey, founded by Queen Ælfthryth in about the year 979. Ælfthryth was the second or third wife of King Edgar of England. Ælfthryth was the first king's wife known to have been crowned and anointed as Queen of the 'Kingdom of England'. Mother of King Æthelred the Unready, she was a powerful political figure and was linked to the murder of her stepson King Edward the Martyr. She seems to have been the inspiration for the stereotypical 'bad queen' and 'evil stepmother' in many medieval and later Disney stories. 

We found ourselves on the verge of gate crashing a wedding about to be held but not before we had a good look around discovering the exact location of the grave of Eleanor of Provence, queen of England, who was buried in the abbey on 11 September 1291, is not known. As well as that we saw a small display of a crucifix dating from around 1530 found in the adjoining vicarage garden in 2009. It would have been worn by one of the nuns before the dissolution of the abbey.

The remainder of our holidays are in the next blog and looks at secrets, leaping & feathers.

AISHA VISITS BUCKINGHAM PALACE!

This year, Aisha has been working hard on the Baden Powell Award for Girl Guides.  She has completed a number of challenge badges, attended World Thinking Day at Pax Lodge (one of the 4 world guiding centres), camped under canvas, made a bivouac and spent the night in it alone, then made a campfire breakfast the following morning.  She has also worked with the Coppett's Wood conservation group and continues to do so, undeterred by her accident (click here to read about it).  To finish off, Aisha is running an evening for her Guide unit about disabilities and is then attending a BP challenge weekend in January with other Guides who have been working towards this award. 

In the meantime, Aisha has been working on the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Challenge award, which must be completed in 2012.  To earn the award, Guides have to complete a number of challenges including one relating to royal transport and staff.  Aisha felt she was pretty well versed on the transport side of things:

• Her friends the Boulters in Canberra own a vintage car the Queen travelled in during her 1956 visit to Australia (thanks Boulters!);
• She stood long hours on the Mall watching the Queen, other royals and heads of state passing by in royal carriages and posh cars to and from William and Kate's wedding;
• She stood more long hours (in the cold) at Waterloo Bridge to watch the Queen go by on her royal barge Spirit of Chartwell, for the Jubilee pageant;
• She watched (on TV - she was tired after all the jubilee standing around!), the Queen and other royals in more posh cars heading to St Paul's Cathedral for a service of celebration and then home in a carriage procession before a Fly Past by the Red Arrows, who she has seen performing live twice;
• She saw (on TV again!) the Queen's guards on foot and on horse back trooping the colours before the Queen rode in a carriage back to Buckingham Palace at the head of her Guards, to take the salute at the Palace from a dais.

So, she quickly decided she needed to learn more about staff!

Sally was aware that there were a few Australians working at Buckingham Palace. With this in mind, Aisha wrote a letter to one of them, asking about their work. It was a lovely surprise when Aisha was contacted and asked if she would like to come to Buckingham Palace to discuss her project and ask her questions in person!

Lots more questions then arose. What arrangements needed to be made? How were we going to make it happen when Aisha was supposed to be at school camp in Oxfordshire that day? (the organising teacher was great - her backpack travelled ahead and arrangements were made for Aisha to join them after her visit). How does one conduct one's self at the palace? Was Aisha brave enough to conduct an 'interview' in person? (Aisha was actually very keen and prepared herself well.) But most importantly....

What would she wear?!! 

Clothing quickly became an issue as Aisha seems to have gone through a growth spurt without telling us and nothing fitted. In the end with a combination of Mum's shoes and shirt, and a skirt that fitted after all, she looked the part!

Not happy - too big and
I've never worn a below the knee skirt before!

Happier and ready to go!

Aisha travelled independently by tube to the palace and it was one very grown up young woman who emerged from the Underground to meet Sally at Green Park. From there they walked to the palace and took time to snap some photos.

All grown up!

I'm going in there!

Police at the front gate checked our documents and then sent us through. We walked across the forecourt and were met at the door by men in coat tails who greeted us, took our coats (and Aisha's glamorous camp day pack) and ushered us into a beautiful waiting room. Aisha caught up on the activities the royals were to attend over the next couple of weeks by reading the schedule on a side table. We were then met by Samantha who showed us to her office.... "Wow" was the reaction from Aisha as she looked around this lovely large room complete with antique furniture and large oil paintings.

The interview went really well and Aisha and Sally were fascinated to learn about Samantha's work - how she is one of three staff who take turns to shadow the Queen wherever she is - Buckingham Palace, Sandringham, Windsor, Balmoral and on international trips. They prepare all the documentation for signature that goes into the red box which the Queen receives daily. Their days and guests are very varied, depending on the Queen's schedule.

Aisha asked questions about how Samantha juggles being a parent and how it feels to be an Australian working at the Palace. The Queen is apparently a lovely employer, maternity leave was available and while there is juggling to do, Samantha has a husband who assists and she is able to work it out.  At Christmas time, the Queen personally thanks each of the 500+ staff at the palace and gives them a Christmas pudding and another lovely gift!  The Queen likes Australians and appreciates having people from around the Commonwealth working with her and contributing an "outside the UK" perspective.

It was lovely for Sally to watch Aisha conducting herself so politely and enthusiastically. Samantha said she was impressed Aisha had noticed the Queen's Standard was not flying and understood this meant she was not in the palace (most people mistakenly think that if the Union Flag is flying the Queen is present), and of Aisha's knowledge of the monarchy (it continues to be a passion / obsession!). 

Aisha's visit to Buckingham Palace was an immense privilege and a wonderful experience. More than this, it was a big eye opener for a kid from the Canberra suburbs. If an Australian graduate can apply for a position, advertised in the papers, at the palace and end up working with the Queen, the sky is the limit for someone like Aisha!  It was definitely one even more grown up young woman who did a quick change of clothes at Paddington Station and waved goodbye to her Mum as she headed off to Oxfordshire for three days of camping...in the rain!

We've been in there!