Here I am, back home again. Where did that week go? A lot of the time was taken up looking after the grand kids but there was time for other things too. I went with Shirley to Timbral Practice and caused a lot of laughter by always finishing the exercise with my timbral ( tambourine) pointing in the wrong direction. The other ladies, mainly from Islander backgrounds, in the beginners class seemed much more musically agile than me and tried to help me with my rhythmn, which really made for a lot of laughter. Always leave 'em laughing, as an old style comedian used to say.

Time sure flies by when you are having fun. There were trips to the park, to the shopping centres etc. The kids and I played totem tennis in the back yard and chased the cat and wrestled with their now full grown dog and played with her various toys. The kids have chores relating to their cat and dog and are really quite organised in what they have to do. Both had grown about six inches taller than they were when I saw them last September. It was good to spend that time with them.

As Shirley had missed Mothers Day a fortnight ago and will miss my birthday on the 4th of June they took me on Monday evening to the waterfront to a nice restaurant where we had a lovely seafood buffet. The prawns were a mixture of banana prawns, a smooth almost yellow colored prawn and tiger prawns which are large with deep orange stripes, they were really delicious, the banana prawns sweet and the tigers tangy and I certainly ate my share of them. It was fantastic to be sitting outside at night, with balmy sea breezes blowing and the street lights on the Esplanade glittering in reflection on the water and knowing folks back here were rugging up with temperatures at least ten degrees colder and the winds ablustering and the rain apouring down. Does you good to gloat sometimes eh?

Not all is sunny in Cairns, Shirley has a dispute between some of the ladies in her group, they are good Christian women but not angels so there is always a difference of opinion here and there. Of course they were very busy with their annual fund raising appeal but unfortunately did not get the funds they needed to totally pay for all the charity work etc they do. In the local area a large amount of funds are needed to support the local Salvation Army's work in drug rehabilitation, homeless shelters, welfare support etc. People who have put their hands in their pockets and donated to the Bushfire Appeals, Flood Victim Appeals etc cannot necessarily now put large amounts of money into other appeals and so some welfare areas will fall short of target and maybe have to reduce the services they can offer.

As part of the Red Shield Appeal I got a certificate of thanks for looking after their kids and the small son of the other officers who have just come down from Papua/New Quinea to start another work in the area for people from that country. Albert is four and very cute and despite his use of pidgin English we managed to communicate well. He just loves Naomi who is close to his age and height and they had lots of fun together. I just love kids and the funny, and sometimes very honest, things they come out with. Talking to kids gives you a very different view of life. I wish we all lived closer so I could help them more than I do now.

I called this entry "a mixture of bananas and tigers" because that is what my family is too. Ray had a lot of the tiger in him, in his youth, while he was doing his carpentry apprenticeship, he was an amatuer boxer for a while. Our sons are both tigers, from their boyhood they have spent time looking after the others weaker than themselves. Naomi is too, though at the moment that shows up mostly in her games with her cat. Hopefully later on, like her mother, she will champion the poor and in some capacity speak for those who have no voice. I am a banana, a joker, a person who likes to laugh, my grandchildren Tori and Christopher are both bananas also. Christopher's special subject this term is "hip hop" so to him life is a comic rhyme, and all day long he turns whatever he is doing into silly verse. It is driving his family mad but it is very funny and he had me laughing a lot, something I need to do right now.

While I was still on my way home tonight my other son rang me to ask if I can look after his two sons tomorrow as Tori has Open Day in her section of her school and Mum needs to go there. We used to drag the whole family along of course but now there is not that provision where the little ones are allowed to play with the blocks in the corner with their older sisters keeping an eye on them while mother talks to the teachers, life has moved beyond that. So I guess I get to catch up with my grandsons again tomorrow...lucky me eh?

So, back home to housework, homework as I study up for the first weekend of my course, and maybe some fun with the little ones...who knows?