Postcard from London #8

Gday all

Well, as you have no doubt heard, we've had some rather interesting weather
over here in the past week. On Wednesday evening we had a couple of inches
of snow which was very exciting for me as it was the first proper snowfall
I've ever seen. I'm sure the people driving down our street must have
wondered what someone my age was doing taking a lot of photos and playing in
the snow. Murray and I had a good snowball fight with the kids next door
which was excellent fun. Of course, I enjoyed it much more once I'd thought
to put some gloves on as my hands froze pretty quickly when scooping up snow
without gloves on. All good things must end however, and the down side of
snow was quickly felt when Holly had to stand in the snow for an hour
waiting for a bus when tube services to Finchley Central were discontinued.
Fortunately they eventually restarted and she was able to get home via tube
when it became apparent that her bus wasn't coming. Unfortunately for Pete
he had to walk all the way home from East Finchley in the snow which took
about an hour. One doesn't feel too bad for him though as he's taken off to
France this week for a week of skiing in SNOW!!!

The other downside of snow became apparent to me the next morning as I had
to navigate footpaths covered in snow and ice. I'm pleased that I didn't end
up on my bum but it did come close a few times.

Teaching has been going well on the whole. I had a really nice year 4 class
for a couple of weeks and did a few activities with them for Australia Day.
I borrowed another teacher's guitar and taught the kids Waltzing Matilda and
True Blue which they really enjoyed and also read Banjo's poem A Bush
Christening to them. I took in a video of the Western Derby from a couple of
years back so that they could see some Australian football and they were all
excited by it finding it far more physical than the girly soccer they're
used to. The only problem was that they only got to see action from the
first half when West Coast were doing us and so the majority of kids
declared immediate allegiance to West Coast. I should have shown them the
second half when Freo (led by Clive) made a brilliant comeback to win by a
point after being 7 goals down. I brought in some Tim Tams for them and I
had a mother come up to me the next day saying that she had to go to Tesco
(the only supermarket that stocks them) that night to buy her son some.
Maybe Arnotts should be giving me a commission!! All in all it was a great
day and the kids were thoroughly indoctrinated into the brilliance of being
an Aussie.

The weather here's warmed up somewhat since last week's cold snap and is
much more reminiscent of a Perth winter which isn't really all that bad. The
days are getting longer very quickly and it is now still light at 5pm. All
this is very encouraging as it means that summer is on the way.

Haven't done any real travelling yet but Holly and I are thinking of popping
down to Venice for a few days in the near future. We also need to head up to
the Lakes District to catch up with a couple of friends we haven't seen
since arriving which should be very nice. It's great that we're finally
getting to the point of being able to see a bit of Europe.

Anyway, that's about all the news from here for now. I hope everyone has a
great February and I shall email again soon(ish).

Cheers
dave