Busy day, busy week ahead
Today was the St Barbara’s Festival Parade in Kalgoorlie. I wrote about it last year, but in brief it’s the city’s community festival in honor of the mining industry.
We were fortunate to have 28-degree weather after some forties during the week. I took Michael, Jim and one of Michael’s friends to the parade. They had a lot of fun watching the floats and collecting lollies.
The girls stayed home to prepare for Maggie’s first dancing concert, which began at 7pm.
After the parade finished I rushed Michael’s friend home and navigated the blocked streets to reach the Goldfields Arts Centre just in time. This is a great venue. I know the manager through Rotary and she does a fantastic job under difficult circumstances.
Maggie goes to the Kalgoorlie Dance Academy and I’ve been very impressed with the instruction. It took a while for the little ones to get into the groove, but I was so proud of my princess tonight.
She was very nervous beforehand. She performed well though and had a smile on her face the whole time.
They asked the little ones (aged 3-4) to come out individually and say their names. Maggie was one of the shy ones. I remember my first school concert, being nervous as part of a big group. I can’t imagine how it would have felt to walk on stage in front of 300 people by myself at the age of three!
The girls performed Splish Splash (You Tube adult version link) and did a great job.
The older kids performed according to their study: Highland dancing, jazz, acrobatic, Irish and ballet. I’m keen for Maggie to progress to Highland dancing, but she can do whatever she likes. The academy has an excellent record with its Highland girls.
There was a professional video cameraman there tonight, who I happen to know. We’re purchasing a DVD, but I’m also going to ask if he will create a web video file for me, so I can show off how special Maggie looked tonight.
That was today. Tomorrow, Juliet takes the train to Perth ahead of an operation on Monday to fix a problem with the veins in her legs. She was going to return on Wednesday, but there is no train or bus on Wednesdays and the doctor said she couldn’t fly.
She’ll come back instead on Thursday afternoon.
On Friday I fly to Victoria to see my Dad, who has a terminal illness. I haven’t written about that here yet; I guess I’m still in denial mode, but pancreatic cancer has no cure.
So from tomorrow to the following Monday I’ll be juggling a swag of commitments and duties between home, work and family. I’m not sure how often I’ll be able to post here, so I might use Twitter more than usual, and as you may have noticed, the top right sidebar on this site carries my latest Twitter entry.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
