Monday, November 15, 2021
Five years without Jack
Jacks death taught us that life can turn in a moment, that all you thought secure can be shattered in a terrible instant, that lesson was bought home again in the worst possible way.
Mikey's best friend, Delsin, died in our sleep-out almost two months ago. Jack died in Melbourne, in his beloved Medley College, so we were spared the terrible immediacy of the Ambulance personnel and the Police (who must attend any unexplained death of a young person) that was forced on Delsin's parents.
Everyone's grief is their own, and our own experience was not that of Delin's parents, Jack was faraway, forging his new life, his presence phone calls and email and all too fleeting visits. Held dear but remaking himself on his own terms away from us.
Delsin was still very large part of his family, an impactful, indisputable presence filling the space around him. His passing was immediate, intrusive, no space to step back and remove your self, if just for a fleeting moment, from that terrible reality.
The sleep-out was a safe space for the boys, where they could play and express themselves. When Jack died his friends came and sat in the sleep-out, silently communing with his memory in their shared space. Delsin also sought solace there, a place where he could have a breather from the world and its storms, reveling in card games and video games with Mikey and his other friends.
Mikey and Delsin's other friends have started playing card games in the sleep-out again, honoring his joy in that space, remaking it.
We still don't know why Delsin died, maybe we never will, just like we still don't know what stilled Jacks heart on the fateful morning 5 years ago. We do know that after years of tests and genetic investigations, that Mikey and Unknown Entity have not inherited any of the common genetic defects associated with Sudden Death Syndrome and that particular sword of Damocles is not dangling over their heads.
We have learned to live without the closure of a diagnosis, but hope that Delsin's family can find closure and comfort in the near future.
Delsin's dad worries that he will forget his son. I worry too, that I will forget Jack even though his picture is on walls at home and work. Am I remembering Jack or just the after image held in place by those mute photos?
Five years on and I no longer think of him every day, but memories flash upon me unbidden, sudden and vivid and emotion holds me in place. No I won't forget our marvelous boy and I'm sure the Delsin's family will not forget him.
Jacks heart was in Melbourne, that marvelous city, genteel and rambunctious at the same time.
Jack is buried under a Moona tree near his beloved grandparents place, with the sound of the waves and bird song for company. We visit him as often as we can, COVID lock-downs not withstanding and listen to the magpies song. The Persimmon tree planted in honour of one of his stories has grown and now regularly bears fruit.
Jack would have been so proud of his brothers. Mikey has completed his sonic arts degree, he is still creating music while trying to find a way to use his creative talents in ways that will earn him a living. Unknown Entity (formerly SmallestOne, but now that he is taller than all of us that no longer fits) has graduated High School, a far cry from the young boy who used to hide under tables at school. He still rides his bike, that landmark achievement that meant so much, he and I go on bike adventures at intervals.
Unknown Entity has followed in Jacks footsteps, taking up Jack's passion, fencing. Unknown Entity has taken to Sabre, rather than foil, but he wears Jacks' fencing glove, a visible connection to his older brother.
The 5th anniversary of Jacks passing was yesterday, but we were hosting some boys from Unknown Entities social skills group, having a party for his 18th birthday. These young men are on the Autism spectrum like Unknown Entity, navigating their way from School to the wider world. So I spent time with Unknown Entity and his friends, thinking of his road ahead and washing so, so many dishes that I didn't have time to finish this essay. I'm sure Jack would understand.
You can find Jacks writing here where he made Satan a warbling magpie, rhapsodised over Paralympic fencing, took weightlifting to absurd heights, explored pie floaters, weirdly rhapsodized the Olympics, did cult interviews and made a persimmon tree a dark harbinger of fate.There is also the Jack Francis Musgrave Award for Creative Absurdity.
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
A belated Christmas and Birthday reflection
"How to make gravy" always makes me cry uncontrollably since Jack died. Even writing about it is uncomfortable. Despite it being a song about loss and yearning to be with family and worry that your role in the family will be replaced (and maybe not as well), I have no idea why this song brings feelings of Jack back so vividly and forcibly.
Loss and yearning plays a big role of course, but Jack never played a central role in the cooking of family Christmas feasts (the main concern of the singing character which stands for his other worries about loss). He certainly never made gravy (although he consumed it with gusto), however on two occasions he played a central role in making dessert pizzas with his brothers and cousins. But I suppose the song just brings home the gap in the family Christmas celebration, the empty chair at the table. All I can say is that song brings grief bubbling unbidden and uncontrollably to the surface in the way no other memory of Jack does.
This was the third Christmas without Jack, and the first without mum, a double dealing of loss. Mum was at the Newberry Hill Christmas celebration only once, but ever after I would hold the phone up on Christmas day so everyone could shout "Merry Christmas" at her from the long table. She loved it, but I will never again make this small ritual of connection.
Jack may not have been a maker of gravy, but we had a semi-occasional birthday ritual of him consuming an enormous schnitzel, which started when poppa Tom challenged him to eat an similarly enormous schnitzel when he was a young lad (he succeeded to everyone's surprise).
This year of course no schnitzels were consumed, the pool untroubled by joyful, energetic young men laughing, jumping and splashing to help him celebrate. But his mate Alex came over and we drank many cups of coffee and discussed life, remembering Jack, coping and animae and manga.
Another loss will be the somewhat late birthday cards from mum, bearing $50 checks for the boys. They will come no more, along with the birthday phone calls, somewhat louder each year as mum got progressively deafer. Another ritual of connection with distant loved ones gone.
Soon mums ashes will rest nestled up to dads, a simple bronze plaque carrying the lines of their service to country and the love of their family. Amounts those ashes will be the ashes of messages of love that accompanied her final journey.
Jack's resting place has no plaque, but bushland, birdsong and a growing collection of beautiful stones to carry his memory with us.
In the future we will have other rituals of connection, as the families grow older, and the children move away with the new lives they forge. One day we will be the distant voices they yell Christmas greetings to, metaphorically passing the gravy recipe to new hands, to carry on where we cannot.
Labels: home life
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Two years without Jack
Two years on from that terrible day so much has changed and so little. SmallestOne's birthday is now bracketed by two sad event's, the loss of his gran and his brother. He may not fully understand why we didn't want to buy him Call of Duty, Black Ops on the 100th anniversary of the end of the War to End all Wars, with the memory of his decorated gran's poppy service still fresh. Now he is swinging with Spider Man instead.
Two years on we follow his friends progress through their lives. There has been ups and down, but they are progressing well, becoming confident young men in a larger world.
Peta and I cry less at random bitter sweet reminders of his life, but I still can't listen to Paul Kelly's "Making Gravy" without tears. I have no idea why this song reminds me of Jack so much or fill me with such loss.
Two years on and SmallestOne progressively faces the challenges of being on the Spectrum, he can ride a bike now, a feat he could not achieve before. This has changed him measurably and he faces the world with more confidence.
Tonight, on the second anniversary of Jack's death, MiddleOne plays in the final concert of his first year at Uni as a Sonic Arts student. The next year without Jack will start with Avant Gard sounds and new hope for the future.
Sunday, November 11, 2018
Vale Monica Margaret Musgrave, 1922-2018
My mother, Monica Margaret Musgrave (nee Palmer), passed away peacefully in her sleep on the morning of 28 October at 96 years old. This post is based on a personal reflection I gave at her funeral.
No person is a single thing in the course of their life, there are many threads that weave through and today we have heard some of the important strands that made up mum’s life.
No one word can sum up a rich life of so many years, but in this personal reflection of my mum I think the word “service”
provides the warp to the weft of mums life.
The most vivid memory I have of mum, I was never there for. Mum and dad wanted us boys to have a good education, and to have opportunities that they never had. So mum lined up outside the gates of Brisbane State High School at 4 am so that myself and Ben could be enrolled in the free intake. We have no idea how she got there (did dad take her?) and mum never really spoke of it, but it was typical of the kinds of lengths mum would go to for us kids.
So many things mum did, from teaching us to climb trees with the poinsettia in the front yard, to sewing us “Dutch Girl” costumes for some scout play (afterwards she would tell us that it was okay to wear a dress occasionally but “we shouldn’t make a habit of it”). Mum was well known for knitting and crocheting, and would crochet everything to within an inch of its life.
No greater love has a young man for his mother than accepting crocheted clothes hangers and hanging them in his cupboard. When I designed a logo for the Queensland Institute of Technology Bushwalking club (euphoniously named QUIT BWUCK) mum laboriously converted it to a knitting pattern and knitted a tasteful black and yellow jumper for me … thanks mum.
On the holidays at Coolum mum would play endless games of Zookeeper with us (I always tried to collect Pachyderms and Reptiles, Ben favoured Big cats), Mum and Ben would team up to tickle me mercilessly. On family picnics, mum’s wicker picnic basket made every picnic a special event. Well-ordered Plates, Knives, forks, and billy tea made over an open fire.
When we were attending QIT mum would wait up for us to come home, not necessarily what a young lad wants when coming back late, although I was mostly studying late at the library, some of the late nights putting the student Newspaper together were not mums idea of what I should be doing. Ben can tell you his stories in person. Mum would always have dinner waiting for me when I got home however late.
Mums cooking skills were legendary, my brother Ben commented she could burn water, but at that hour dehydrated meat and anonymous mashed vegetables were ambrosia. When writing up my final year project with my lab partner Joy Brush mum stayed up far too late converting my horrible writing into neat typing.
If mum was notorious for her cooking her cups of tea were renowned. Visitors to mums place were always greeted with a cup of tea (or later, more sophisticated Nescafe 43). I have very warm memories of my friends crammed around the tiny table in our tiny kitchen quaffing mums tea. My tall friend Rob Walpole would stride up and down the kitchen expounding on some topic or other while tiny mum chased after him with his cuppa.
From 1944 to 1946 Mum served in the Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service as a tele-typiste. During her two years with WRANS her service to her country was acknowledged when Mum was awarded the war medal. Her service was acknowledged further at the funeral by her casket bearing the white ensign and the WRANS performing a poppy service.
Mum was also devoted to the Bowls club, she and dad were foundation members, and later mum would be made a life member and have a green named after her.
But over the years the cuppas remained constant. In the later years when I visited, we would sit companionably side by side with a cuppa each watching TV (turned up to a volume that shook the windows). When looking at the photos in preparing for this I know that there are more people who enriched her life and in turn who enriched hers, than I have had a chance to acknowledge, her beloved sisters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and great grandchildren, friends and neighbours.
Many could sadly not be at the funeral, as the threads of their lives unravelled by time, but many family and friends made the sometimes-difficult journey to celebrate the weave of mum's life, and were important threads in that weave.
I will leave you with this last image, mum curled up asleep in her chair in the flickering light of the TV, watched over by pictures of Frank, my son Jack, and all the other family and friends from Bowls and WRANS, at peace and safe in their regard.
No person is a single thing in the course of their life, there are many threads that weave through and today we have heard some of the important strands that made up mum’s life.
No one word can sum up a rich life of so many years, but in this personal reflection of my mum I think the word “service”provides the warp to the weft of mums life.
The most vivid memory I have of mum, I was never there for. Mum and dad wanted us boys to have a good education, and to have opportunities that they never had. So mum lined up outside the gates of Brisbane State High School at 4 am so that myself and Ben could be enrolled in the free intake. We have no idea how she got there (did dad take her?) and mum never really spoke of it, but it was typical of the kinds of lengths mum would go to for us kids.
No greater love has a young man for his mother than accepting crocheted clothes hangers and hanging them in his cupboard. When I designed a logo for the Queensland Institute of Technology Bushwalking club (euphoniously named QUIT BWUCK) mum laboriously converted it to a knitting pattern and knitted a tasteful black and yellow jumper for me … thanks mum.
When we were attending QIT mum would wait up for us to come home, not necessarily what a young lad wants when coming back late, although I was mostly studying late at the library, some of the late nights putting the student Newspaper together were not mums idea of what I should be doing. Ben can tell you his stories in person. Mum would always have dinner waiting for me when I got home however late.
Mums cooking skills were legendary, my brother Ben commented she could burn water, but at that hour dehydrated meat and anonymous mashed vegetables were ambrosia. When writing up my final year project with my lab partner Joy Brush mum stayed up far too late converting my horrible writing into neat typing.
If mum was notorious for her cooking her cups of tea were renowned. Visitors to mums place were always greeted with a cup of tea (or later, more sophisticated Nescafe 43). I have very warm memories of my friends crammed around the tiny table in our tiny kitchen quaffing mums tea. My tall friend Rob Walpole would stride up and down the kitchen expounding on some topic or other while tiny mum chased after him with his cuppa.
Mum was also devoted to the Bowls club, she and dad were foundation members, and later mum would be made a life member and have a green named after her.
But over the years the cuppas remained constant. In the later years when I visited, we would sit companionably side by side with a cuppa each watching TV (turned up to a volume that shook the windows). When looking at the photos in preparing for this I know that there are more people who enriched her life and in turn who enriched hers, than I have had a chance to acknowledge, her beloved sisters, nieces and nephews, grandchildren and great grandchildren, friends and neighbours.
I will leave you with this last image, mum curled up asleep in her chair in the flickering light of the TV, watched over by pictures of Frank, my son Jack, and all the other family and friends from Bowls and WRANS, at peace and safe in their regard.
Labels: home life
Sunday, January 28, 2018
Jack would have been 21 Today
I didn't cry.
Jack would have been 21 today, the traditional Coming of Age made irrelevant by people being given adult rights and responsibilities at 18. Jack had embraced his adulthood vigorously, he couldn't wait to vote (learning to drive not so much). His 18th was an exuberant, lively affair, lots of friends, swimming and skylarking around in the backyard. SmallestOne remembers it most as someone put an empty beer bottle on top of the clothes hoist.
Today the backyard is quiet, no one is dive-bombing in the pool, or hanging out in the cabana listening to music or playing computer games. We had a small celebration with his friends for what would have been Jacks 20th last year, but this year the scorching temperatures and work commitments meant we didn't organise anything. The backyard is quiet.
The day after Australia day for us will no longer be a celebration, but a remembrance of a young man who celebrated life as he was finding his identity and voice in a larger world. He stumbled and fell at the threshold to that world, through a random, unfathomable act of nature, but we hold dear the memory of his journey, in the stillness of the back yard and silent pool.
You can find some of Jack's writing for Farrago here
Our friend Frankie shared a photo of Jack when we were at the Turramurra Music Camp in 2000, the highlight for us was Jack's nudie dance during the talent contest. He certainly didn't do things by halves.
Labels: home life
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
A year without Jack
A year ago today, sometime in the early morning, our sonJack died. A year ago, stunned, shocked, uncomprehending we flew out of
Adelaide, into Melbourne and a world without Jack. A year on, many tests later
we still do not know why he died. Something like 50% of all sudden deaths in
young healthy people never do have definitive explanations. The most likely
explanation is a rogue electrical storm seized his heart.
We have been tested for the commonest forms of heritable heart disease that can cause such lethal storms. We are all clear of them,
MiddleOne at the very least is free of these forms, and is probably no more
likely than most people to succumb to a cardiac storm.
Can you imagine what it would be like to be a teenager with
that hanging over you? Exams, career planning none of that matters when your
future could be taken from you in an instant. Now the Damocles sword has been
removed and life can move on past the year without Jack.
A year without Jack. The final anniversary in the dreadful countdown but not the end of the process. There will always be a gap, a space
where Jack was. A bus station where he will not arrive, a fencing club he will
not go to, a phone number that will not answer.
We can navigate that space now, rather than tiptoe around it
as we move into the future. Our friends and Jacks friends, our family, the Farrago community and the
Medley community have all worked together to find our paths around this gap. We
will continue to journey on. Jacks friends will branch out into the wider world,
continuing to forge their identities, facing new challenges, new successes and
failures (for how do we learn if we do not fail occasionally). Possibly wearing
pink fencing socks.
His brothers too are charting their own futures in their own
ways. They will make their own impacts, whether in music or some other sphere,
enriching the lives they touch. Not in the same way Jack enriched others’
lives, but in their own special ways. One year past Jack the future beckons.
A year without Jack, but a year with his stories. Hopefully
his stories, his beautiful powerful stories, will inspire people to continue on
the journey started by Brave Ulysses and the world will in fact not be without Jack.
Monday, December 05, 2016
Jack is gone (NSFW)
Jack is gone. My beautiful boy will no longer slope off the Melbourne-Adelaide bus, gangly, rumpled, sleepy, and so very, very Melbourne. We will no longer drive home through the dawn, talking music, philosophy or just sitting together silently.
Because you fell in the bathroom and died. WHY DID YOU FUCKING DO THAT! HOW COULD YOU! HOW COULD YOU!
But you were always doing the unexpected weren’t you, you bastard. Peta and I were planning a hippy birth for you, with music and scented oils, but you arrived 6 weeks early and we had machines that went beep and nitrous oxide instead. We couldn’t even hold you at first, all curled up and purple in your humidicrib. It was days later that you first held my finger through the humidicrib’s porthole.
You were born with talipes, clubfoot, and the splints and plasters on your ill-formed foot made you restless in the heat of the summer night. I would push your pram through the night shrouded streets of Elwood in the early hours, as I tried to sooth you to sleep. Walking with you under those dark skies brought me back to astronomy, abandoned by the pressure of study and postdoctoral research.
Later when I showed you a lunar eclipse, for ages after you called Selene “Daddy’s Moon”. Anyone who has heard my voice on radio, or seen me on TV, should know that it was Jack that started my journey to the media with those nights walking through the dark, trying to bring sleep to him.
Jack didn’t let his club foot stop him through all the splints, casts and surgery. From a young boy taking cricket runs, his cast puffing up dust, through tennis and soccer he persevered. He indulged Peta and my love of bushwalking, although together he and I did a long day walk sharing one of my favourite places, the scenic rim at O'Reilly's. We walked through cool forests of Antarctic Beech and gazed out over panoramas to the coast doing the silent male bonding thing. YOU STILL OWE ME A BUSHWALK ON THE HEYSEN TRAIL YOU BASTARD.
We didn’t know until after he died how much his club foot bothered him, and how he searched for a sport where he and his leg could be accepted. Jack finally found his sport in fencing. Lunging and parrying, with his skinny “bung leg” encased in his bright pink fencing socks he was never happier.
Was that what happened Jack? DID YOUR TRAITOR LEG FAIL YOU THAT NIGHT and bring you crashing down? Or did electrical storms surge through your fencers heart stopping it? Or something else, hidden from the pathologists art? We may never know.
Fencing was Jack’s joy, but writing was Jack’s passion. On the epic family road trip Jack sat in the back of the campervan ignoring 3,000 kilometers of spectacular scenery, writing his novella. From quirky and absurd to dark and serious, Jack launched Tasmania into space, made Satan a warbling magpie, rhapsodised over paralympic fencing and made a persimmon tree a dark harbinger of fate. His last story published before he died was Sudden Unexpected Death Syndrome. WHY THAT ONE JACK, WHY BLOODY HELL THAT ONE! I still can’t read it all the way through, I just can’t. Could you anticipate your story of unforetold death would foreshadow your own?
A young man on the threshold of new challenges, he now will be forever 19, future disappointments avoided, future achievements unrealised. But he will live on in the hearts and memories of his friends and family and in the students he mentored. He touched so many lives, not only through his writing for the student magazine Farrago, where so many Australian writers were launched, but through Farrago’s Jack Francis Musgrave award for Creative Absurdity which will honour Jack’s love of the quirky and inspire future writers.
His posthumous story "my Bung Leg and Me" to be published in Voiceworks, his first paid writing work, is a semi-autobiographical history of talipes. If this story helps even one person cope better with disability, it will be a fitting legacy. Jack had also become ambassador for wheelchair fencing, should wheelchair fencing take hold in this will extend Jack’s legacy into the future.
Jack is gone, in his place are pictures, stories and memories. Of all my memories of him this one comes to me most often; Jack and I, driving home together in companionable silence, towards the dawn, a new day, and a bright new future.
You can find more of Jack's writing for Farrago here
For those struggling, reach out to your friends and family, or maybe the Black Dog Institute can help
http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/
http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/
Wheelchair Fencing at Fioretto Fencing Club, Victoria. Jack is no longer the contact of course, but contact Fencing Victoria directly if you are interested.
Labels: home life
Monday, July 07, 2014
Just in Case You Have Been Wondering Where I have Been
My posts have been a little thin on the ground recently, initially because of preparing for exams and an international conference.
The this happened, follow-ups are here, here, here, here and here. It will be a while before I am fully back on deck, but a few more posts may be coming sooner rather than later.
The this happened, follow-ups are here, here, here, here and here. It will be a while before I am fully back on deck, but a few more posts may be coming sooner rather than later.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Monday, March 31, 2014
MiddleOne is an odd number old
His age has two digits. The sum of the two digits is an even number, as is the sum of the two digits of EldestOne's age.
Adding these two numbers together gives you a two digit number that is one less than MiddleOne's age. Subtracting them gives you an even prime number.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Einstein the Musical
It was brilliant, with a rap song about E = MC2, and lots of audience participation.
The Bettdeckererschnappender weisel and I were chosen to act out time dilation (standing in foor the previous two audience members who were acting out vector addition), I got to hold a light saber, BDEW got a vacuum cleaner named Hette, she was not amused, and muttered about 21st century role models, but we were informed it was 1936, so that didn't apply).
It was an absolute hoot, the last show is tomorrow, why not go along?
(PS, do I need to tell you I have the best family ever?)
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Friday, January 03, 2014
I Have The Best Family (part 2)
Photographer mother-in-law gifted me her old Pentax K10D DSLR as well (still not worthy).
I have to get an micro SD card for the Go Pro, then it is coming on my next canoe trip. The Pentax fits my telescope adaptor for my Pentax KM film camera, next clear night it is going on my telescope.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Friday, November 22, 2013
EldestOne plays the Scarecrow
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
At MiddleOne's Concert
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Thursday, November 14, 2013
Waiting for Godot
Monday, November 11, 2013
SmallestOne is Double-digit Old
SmallestOne now has an Aragorn costume.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Monday, September 02, 2013
Fathers Day 2013
SmallestOne and I played Sci-Fi card games and MiddleOne came kayaking with me (he didn't actually go kayaking, but he sat on the bank in the sunshine while I paddled about).
Best.Family.Ever
Spent earlier tonight watching EldestOne play soccer against hos schools alumni. He did pretty darned well, nice hook shot and a sweet header.
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Another kind of stars
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Science Week Begins 10-18 August 2013
National Science Week runs from 10 to 18 August this year, and there are loads of great science events for you to go to.
Today SmallestOne and I went to Science Alive, once again a geat experience with many fantastic science disciplines on display with hands on events. There were microscopes to look through, fossil digs, brain hats and the ubiquitous slime (what kid of any age doen't like slime).
There was a great robotics workshop too, SmallestOne got o do his first ever robotics program, which worked!
There were two new things this year, and it seemed almost every other booth had them: vortex cannon and 3D printers. When I last went in 2011, neither were to be seen, but this year they were in profucion. The 3D printers were amazing, SmallestOne got a printed whistle out of it, the leaps and bound this technology is making is astounding.
The vortex cannon were pretty good too, SmallestOne got to have a go and together we shot prefect circles of smoke into the ceiling. Some people could shoot rings through previous rings.
One that was not so charming was the vortex cannon that was linked to an X-Box video camera, it could target and fire smoke rings at the nearest person. The kids loved it, laughing deligtedly as smoke ring hit them. but a robotic system that can tagert and fire somekrings at individuals can target and fire othe, not so nice things.
A sobering thought to an otherwise delightful science fest.
So, why not head out this week for a heaping of sciencey goodness. You can't see the Bad Astronomer though, he's booked out.
Labels: home life, science communicators, science week
Friday, August 02, 2013
Concert: Songs to Sip Soup By
My
beloved Bettdeckererschnappender Weisle's acappella group, Nobody's Fault but Mine is having a concert this
weekend - Sunday 4th August, 4pm, St Theodore's Church Hall, Cnr Swaine and Prescott, Toorak Gardens. $5 homemade soup included. I'll be the doorman.
If you haven't seen the (rather embarrassing acording to BDSW) video .. check it out here
http://vimeo.com/14447026
If you haven't seen the (rather embarrassing acording to BDSW) video .. check it out here
http://vimeo.com/14447026
Labels: home life, miscellaneous
Wednesday, July 03, 2013
EldestOne wins a Writing Prize
It was a free-wheeling science fiction story, I thought it rather good (although I'm his dad, so that doesn't count, but the part where Tasmania rose out of the ocean and launched itself into space was pretty hilarious).
Well, the judges thought it okay as well, and he won Silver in the Youth Writer (15-24 years) section. Not bad for his first competition. The Deputy Mayor read out the précis of his story with relish.
EldestOne is off holidaying with the rest of the family while I stay here and mark exams (sad face), so I gave him the good news by phone, and impersonated him for the photo's I also conveyed the part of one of the judges speech where she emphasised edition and revising (evil grin).
Now if I can just convince MiddleOne that his art is fine.
Labels: home life, miscelaneous
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
