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you can teach an old dog new tricks
29 March 2016 22:26


Another item added to my “eleven things to do before I’m fifty and three-quarters”. Rollerblading. Yes, I tried that at the weekend. I’d forgotten how much the ground hurts when you fall on it.

CS3 was given a pair of roller blades for Christmas and yesterday was her first try out. One of her friends came over for the afternoon so CGF found a pair that she could use as well. Then she found another pair that might fit me. To my great disappointment, they did. So I was appointed the “responsible adult” to go out and supervise. Or maybe I was just being a born-again Ovaltiney.

Thing is, I’ve been ice skating before. Twice. Thirty years ago. So I soon got the hang of it and was able to proceed roughly in a straight line so long as no uphill slopes were involved – even shallow and short slopes proved to be a bit of a challenge. Once the younglings spotted this they trusted me to support them and I spent the rest of the time with a youngling clinging to each arm.

But we managed – in a fashion – to make a circuit of the block, even if it did take us an hour.

The bizarre thing is, I had another go the following day.


CS3 and I had another oboe/recorder duet session. I found a new note – by which I mean I discovered that I knew another note. I was playing something by ear and instinctively and correctly hit the right note. I have no idea what note it was – left hand middle finger plus thumb. Like top D but with the thumb hole covered.

I couldn’t play several of the pieces because they were in the wrong key (which, I think, is the technical term for “the number of flats and sharps”)
“That’s got three flats. I don’t know three flats”, I complained.
“Most orchestral music has three flats. Or if not three, two” CS3 patiently explained.
“But I only know how to play one flat”, I pointed out.
“Which one is that?”
“Duh! B of course”.


Monday afternoon we went for a short bike ride. We got to a pub and went in for a drink, and chips. On the way back we found an ice cream van, so had an ice cream too. Yes, we probably put on more calories than we cycled off.

I did say that the ice cream van had no ice cream as it was playing the “I have run out of ice cream” tune. No one believed me. Even when I supported my argument by pointing out that the fire truck we saw had been playing a tune, and everyone knows that fire trucks never have ice cream.

I was half-vindicated however – the Mr Softee machine had broken, so the van had only scoop ice cream (which is probably a better alternative to Mr Softee).


Last week I joined a team for a charity quiz evening. We didn’t win – but we didn’t come last either. We ended up around the middle of the order.

One of the questions on which we were stumped was “who is the current deputy prime minster”. We discounted the prominent politicians we could think of and concluded that we didn’t know. We asked the same question to the fifteen-year old son of two of my fellow team members at the weekend. He thought for a moment and replied “there isn’t one” – the correct answer. He had followed the same thought process that we had, but come to a different conclusion.


“How do you roll your R’s” asked CS3
"I don’t know; I just do it."
“Well can’t you do it slowly and tell me how?”
“Not really – if I’m rolling my R’s I can’t speak”

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