La galette des rois

We enjoyed la galette des rois very much... turns out that Malcolm was king this year, which Duncan took in good spirits, after an appropriate interval of disappointment. (Maggie needs to practice her technique to ensure that she can influence who gets the fevre or little surprise in the cake, and who therefore gets the crown).

What else has been going on since Epiphany? Not much apart from getting back into the usual routine. Malcolm's been getting great marks on math, geometry, fractions, and showing a steadily improvement on his dictée, which is a huge part of French education. It's not a big deal at all for us anglos as there aren't really many accords in English: I run, you run, he runs, she runs, they run, we run, they (plural) run. You've really only got two choices for the verb form, run or runs, and the articles and the adverbs don't change with the person who is doing the actual running.

It's totally different in French, and all these components have to agree with the actor (the person doing the running), so Malcolm works very hard, and he's doing well, and has already learned some conjugations that I have no clue about, in any language.


Duncan is getting much better on forming his letters, and he draws and writes extremely well, and is getting better with his comportment in class. He loves to play foot (ball), and has lots of friends, but he's still carrying a torch for his pals back home, including Roxy. The boys are coming back on the Easter vacation with us, but their friends in Canada will be in school, so we are talking about having a little visit in the schools; maybe Duncan can spend a little time with his old daycare buddies, and Malcolm might be able to arrange a day at Withrow with his buddy Nicholas.

I have confirmed the Brahms Requiem in Perth, April 5th, and am still talking about some other things while I'm back... more to come later. I picked up my Zauberflöte score yesterday so I had some fun yesterday and today working through that as well as some Bach stuff, as well as the Don Carlos per me guinta. I picked up some new Bach music for a song (wucka wucka!) at the used music store, including a cantata with all the parts for 8 euro, and three volumes of arrangements of Bach arias for alto, tenor and bass plus cello and oboe for around 12 euros. There are also some really beautiful John Ireland songs to poems by Masefield and Rossetti and others that I picked up that I want to look at... so much music, so little time. Bruce has often told me that he had to give up very early on the idea of ever getting through all the music that existed for his voice type in opera, let alone all the art song stuff. I know what he means...

So that's about it, I'm back in my routine too, swimming and exercising and practicing and calling and strategizing and auditioning. Bon weekend!