Monday activities

Some people are skilled in organisation and logistics. Unfortunately, in our family none of us is particularly gifted in these areas. As I'm at home, I mostly keep track of everyone's activities, but it's sometimes a struggle to remember what's going on. I'm glad the boys do so many things, but trying to fit meals and general life (not to mention the academic part of home education) around everything else can be difficult, even stressful at times.

After the summer, it always takes a while for my brain to get around so much action all at once. In previous years it seems to have happened more slowly, too. Schools started either in the middle of last week or yesterday morning, and it appears that most extra-curricular activities are starting this week too.

Monday is a 'music day' in our household. At 9am a friend arrives to give the boys aural music lessons - one at a time, and although in theory they have half an hour each they often chat, or talk about music in general, and she's often here till nearly 11am. This was the first aural lesson since June. Both boys play instruments but have hardly taken any exams; however they're both thinking about doing one or two of the higher grades, just so as to have extra paper qualifications. Besides, people in Cyprus seem to like certification. Aural music is part of the RSM and Guildhall exams, and although they've both picked up a fair amout through general musical experience, there are some gaps.

At 11am Daniel then has his drum lesson for an hour. That also happens in our house, and is fairly noisy! The cats are distinctly unimpressed. Dan uses drum pads for some of his practising, which makes the sound much quieter, but for the lesson they have to be removed. He seems to be progressing fast: his teacher says he could take grade 5 in the early spring, which is pretty good going as he only really started last October. But as he may be returning to the Doulos in February, there probably won't be time.

At lunchtime we had a guest - a colleague of Richard's who lives in Malta but is here for a conference. He stayed overnight at the office, and came here with Richard for lunch. Not a problem: we nearly always have bread-based lunches with cheese, salad, fruit etc, so as long as I know someone's coming it's easy enough to cater for them.

After lunch Tim usually does his piano practice, now it's September and there's no siesta-time (in July and August we're supposed to keep quiet between 1pm and 4pm) and later on Dan does his clarinet practice. However they spent most of the afternoon at Theatre Antidote, helping to set up lights for the premiere of their new performance, which is on Saturday.

At 6pm Tim had a singing lesson at one of the local music schools. This is something he's been hoping to do for some time, but only just got around to arranging. He said it went extremely well. Apparently he has an advantage over many of the students in that he can read music, and did sing in a choir when he was younger.

Then Dan should probably have gone to the Municipal Band practice at 8pm. However he couldn't remember if it started yesterday or on Thursday. Besides that, our car was in for a major service and some repairs, so he would have had to walk, and he was pretty tired. So he decided not to go. Just as well since we ended up eating quite late, nearly 7.30pm by the time everyone was home.

After supper, Richard went to his office to do some recording for Theatre Antidote - sound effects and so on for their new play. Tim went to help. They weren't back by the time I went to sleep around 10.30; Tim, who slept till late morning today, told me they didn't get back till 1.30am!! He hadn't noticed the time...