Spring

I can't believe it's nearly three months since Christmas, nearly Easter. Today is a lovely spring day - breezy and sunny, about 20C outside. I was amused to see someone commenting that the UK was having a heatwave of 20C, when to me that's still pleasantly cool. Evidently I've adjusted to Cyprus temperatures, at least somewhat!

Home education is a bit piecemeal at present. Daniel still has about 15 workbooks ('paces') and tests for his curriculum work to do before completing level 2, equivalent to A/S level. However he's been so busy with other things that he's hardly done anything since the end of last year. Tim has about 10 to finish the level 1 (equivalent to GCSE) and then quite a few more before he gets level 2. I don't see that there's any hurry: neither of them want to go to university, at least not in the immediate future. I'm less and less convinced about the need for any formal qualifications other than for the few careers that require them. However having got this far we're all agreed it's a bit silly not to finish at least what they're on. Still, this is the week before Easter and would be a school holiday in the UK, so I don't suppose anything at all will get done this week.

But life goes by and there are too many other activities and distractions. I'm not the kind of person to sit them down to work, even though I issue random reminders from time to time. Tim is 16 and keen for me to remember that he's now beyond compulsory education age anyway. Dan is working part-time for the theatre group. Right now he's in the middle of a performance of 'The Little Man's Best Friend', a lovely play with very little dialogue. They've finished the public performances, but are still booked for some school ones - this play attracts primary schools and the very youngest children love it. Dan is one of the musicians in the play, with a tiny amount of acting; mostly he's playing the clarinet.

Usually Tim begins Monday mornings with a music aural lesson, in preparation for doing an exam at some point, but his teacher is busy with guests this week so that was cancelled. Dan usually has a drum lesson mid-morning but had to cancel that due to the play performance. So it's been a more peaceful Monday than usual. I walked to the local supermarket earlier; Richard's away in Egypt so we didn't do our usual weekly shop on Friday. It's only five minutes' walk and we didn't need that much food. I did buy a couple of bags of oranges - there are none left on our tree, but they're only 30c/kg at the supermarket, so four glasses of freshly-squeezed juice each morning only costs about 40p in British currency.

There were pears in bags too, slightly bruised in places but still firm, also costing 30c/kg. Usually they're considerably more. So I bought a bag and experimented with 'live porridge', as described in the book 'Raw Energy'. Put about half a cup (any size - though I use American cups of 8 fluid ounces each) of mixed nuts and seeds in a food processor and grind until small. Add quarter of a cup of raisins and about four pears, washed and cored but no need to peel, and process again until smooth.

The resulting gunge didn't look particularly appetizing; it was a kind of greeny-brown colour with bits in, but it smelled good and tasted wonderful! I used almonds and sesame seeds but will include some flaxseeds next time for the Omega-3 oils. The boys and I have been eating mostly raw breafasts recently, but until now they've been been based on grated apple rather than processed pears.