Outstanding!

I led another class at Five Rivers today, some kindergartners from Schenectady. When it came to maples they were the best-informed class of 5 and 6 year-olds ever. Wow, they hardly needed me there at all. Still, I think they had a good time - I did.

Breaking news from the UK this evening: Linton Children's Book Festival has just received an award and is now officially South Cambridgeshire's most Outstanding Festival! I feel like a proud mum or something. I bet there'll be a few people walking round the village with big smiles on their faces tomorrow, and deservedly so. Bookfest team, you're awesome!

All part of the service

It has been chucking it down with rain all day. At the car dealers', where I'd taken the car in for a service, the desk guy was joking with a customer - "I'd like to say we've given your car a complimentary wash, but actually we just squirted some soap on it then left it outside for a bit."

"Complimentary" - that's a good one, like you don't have to pay for those "little extras" somewhere in the final bill. Though in fact today I didn't have to pay for a thing. Really! I even made a small profit, thanks to judicious use of money-off vouchers. The Man was very pleased and asked me to marry him.

Taking the car in for a service is the only time I get to watch "Let's Make a Deal!" and "The Price is Right!", two gruesomely fascinating shows that don't make me long for a telly. Today on Price is Right someone called Meredith appeared to be about to win Scotland...but the price was wrong (she guessed too low) so she didn't.

Going on a bear hunt?

I was teaching little ones again at Five Rivers this morning. For fun I had them look out for nuts nibbled by squirrels as we took the route between the maples. They found plenty. One boy got interested in the nuts to the exclusion of everything else, and went into flights of fancy about how the nuts came to be abandoned - maybe the squirrel saw a bear and ran away?

I can imagine his parents' puzzlement later as he told the tale of the squirrel and the bear, which I'm sure by tea-time would have become completely real and a scene he'd actually witnessed.

Mom and Dad must be wondering what kind of dangerous field trips they take kids on at that Five Rivers place.

Bowled over

I've been stitching quite intensively this weekend, trying to get my latest quilt finished so I can hand it in to school where it will be raffled. I enjoy hand-quilting, but it doesn't half wreck your fingers (temporarily) and I'm having to type tonight with my most needled fingers at strange angles to avoid pain. However, I'm very nearly done with the project - just a binding to add tomorrow.

I did break off from sewing to accompany my son to his friend's bowling party. Most of the kids there were about seven and bowled accordingly, though there was one wunderkind, only six years old, who bowled like a pro. He got at least three strikes and five or six spares. His mom looked dumbfounded. He was utterly nonchalant. Beginner's luck? Or raw talent? It was hard to tell. If talent, is that worth nurturing? Can you make a living at ten-pin bowling?

Cohoes Falls

The Man writes...prompted by a recent visit by the Exile, I took myself off this morning to see the Cohoes Falls.


I was barely aware of the existence of these falls, even though they are only fifteen minutes from downtown Albany and are of considerable scale: roughly 1000 feet long and 100 feet high. Since 1831 their power has been put to industrial use: first for cotton mills then for hydroelectricity, and their value as a scenic spectacle has been secondary.

Approaching from Albany you see a small sign at the last minute, turn off and park in a residential street of Victorian houses, and then find yourself on your own looking at this natural wonder from some distance over barbed wire.


In 2008 a new park opened affording a closer look, but sadly it is closed until May 1st. With the Falls at their most impressive due to the Spring thaw and under brilliant blue skies, this was a pity. I certainly hope to return in the Summer.

Eggsplosion at the Y

Though I'll have a lesson tomorrow, today was my last chance to free-skate at the YMCA this season, so I took myself down there for a final session. As I arrived I was concerned to see numbers of people standing outside the building, in a manner that suggested a fire drill.

In fact there actually was a fire, or at least some exploding eggs. A teacher in the YMCA pre-school had started boiling eggs for the children, then forgotten about them - with disastrous consequences. As soon as the alarm went off someone whisked the pan off the stove and that was the end of that, except that of course by then everyone had evacuated the building and fire-fighters were on their way.

Very magnificent they looked, too, arriving in a shiny engine and striding into the building all geared up in their protective clothing to switch off the alarm. The pre-schoolers were delighted - obviously a close encounter with a fire-fighter trumps a boiled egg any day.

Memorable maples

I took a turn at teaching the Maples lesson at Five Rivers today. I had a group of lovely pre-schoolers and their grown-ups and it was lots of fun. Because I don't spend much time around very small children these days I had forgotten how little they know - they really are like blank slates. Lucky them, they have their whole lives before them to fill up their heads with knowledge - only to reach about my age and have it all start trickling out again (like sap from a maple tree).

The most useful thing I've learnt from training at Five Rivers is this: students remember 10% of what they hear, 30% of what they read, 50% of what they see and 90% of what they do. At Five Rivers, hands-on activity makes up the largest part of every lesson - today, for example, I had the kids pretending to be trees, drilling holes, tapping in spiles, tasting sap and syrup and giving a tree a hug. That should have given them lots to remember.

Incidentally, I had to refer to my notes for the exact details of those memory statistics - obviously they'd slipped into the 90%-of-what-I-hear-I-forget category.