Summer part II

Essential skills for all 12-year olds:

• open a bottle of wine with a pulltaps corkscrew
• make a gin and tonic
• make a martini
• make espresso

I remember my uncle Gus telling me about pouring whisky when I was about Malcolm's age... I think it went something like, "three cubes of ice in a tumbler, then juuuust float the cubes. Then add your mix, or if you prefer leave it as is." A good skill to remember if you are making drinks for several people and don't want to be bothered with finding a measure.

This is especially true for those who choose acting as a career: Bruce tells me that Rod Maxwell, the former head of the theatre programme at Sheridan college, used to teach the first year acting class how to make cocktails, since, as he put it, "This is probably going to be their first job after graduation anyway". There is no indication from Malcolm that he wants to act, but there are worse first jobs than baristo, or bartender.

We are pretty much recovered from our trip back; it wasn't terribly stressful this time, since the flight was only a couple of hours, but I was suffering from some sort of terrible acid indigestion, and a day or two later, from terrible muscle pains. Maggie also had some of those symptoms only not as intensely... I think I got some sort of summer flu bug.

Fortunately that is over now, and I'm feeling better. We're catching up on bills and paperwork, and also finalizing our list for our upcoming trip to the UK. We have friends in the vicinity of London and York, and plan to take two or three days to make it through England on our way to Rob and Viki and Katie up in Garvald, near Edinburgh. We plan to see some of the sights in the south, and also during our Scotland stay, visit the Kilravock castle of the Rose clan, near Inverness. My mother has a family connection to the Clan Macpherson, and their castles (Ballindalloch and Cluny) are around 40-50 miles from Kilravock, so maybe in the distant past our ancestors knew each other?


I will let you know more about the trip as it unfolds, but since we haven't spent much time in England at all, we plan to see some of the historic sites on our way through. Happy August 1st to our fellow Canadians... rock out during the long weekend!