Friday, February 23, 2007
Ding Dong
I’ve written about the cottage before. It’s a lovely place and is where LL’s maternal grandparents finally retired to. Recently the local church did a drive to raise funds to purchase 4 second hand bells and to caste 2 new ones to take them from a peel of 3 to a peel of nine. In quintessential british fashion LL’s family clubbed together to pay for one of the new bells (the grandparents are buried in the church graveyard).
The casting was two days ago. In equally quintessentially british fashion (well, perhaps quintessentially family fashion, such disorganisation is a family standard throughout the world I think) we didn’t find out about it until two days in advance (even though LL’s parents came down to stay with us to be closer to the foundry, we thought they were coming down for completely different reasons).
I couldn’t get the time off on such short notice, but LL did and the boy’s schools enthusiastically supported them being pulled out for the day. Ali Baba’s teacher even wailed more than we had at the short notice. She would have brought the whole class along.
Needless to say, the kids loved it. They were well behaved which pleased their mother and grandmother to no end. Maternal pride swells big time when receiving compliments from the other ladies of the church on delightfully well behaved children. Plus, they frankly learned loads. I received a detailed enthusiastic lecture on how a bell is cast, what proportion of which metals is used, how they get tuned, and so on and so on.
What really made me proud though (as if I could get any more proud of my kids), was that my painfully shy little Ali Baba got up in front of his whole school at assembly and did an impromptu speech. Confidence is such a precious thing, it’s a joy to see it sparkle.
The casting was two days ago. In equally quintessentially british fashion (well, perhaps quintessentially family fashion, such disorganisation is a family standard throughout the world I think) we didn’t find out about it until two days in advance (even though LL’s parents came down to stay with us to be closer to the foundry, we thought they were coming down for completely different reasons).
I couldn’t get the time off on such short notice, but LL did and the boy’s schools enthusiastically supported them being pulled out for the day. Ali Baba’s teacher even wailed more than we had at the short notice. She would have brought the whole class along.
Needless to say, the kids loved it. They were well behaved which pleased their mother and grandmother to no end. Maternal pride swells big time when receiving compliments from the other ladies of the church on delightfully well behaved children. Plus, they frankly learned loads. I received a detailed enthusiastic lecture on how a bell is cast, what proportion of which metals is used, how they get tuned, and so on and so on.
What really made me proud though (as if I could get any more proud of my kids), was that my painfully shy little Ali Baba got up in front of his whole school at assembly and did an impromptu speech. Confidence is such a precious thing, it’s a joy to see it sparkle.
