Watch your manners

I know you must be dying to hear about the fishcakes, the conclusion to last night’s fish story. I made them and they were a great success! We all enjoyed them. Of the batch of 24, only 4 are left. I think I didn’t get all the bones out though because I heard a lot of crunching when I was chopping up the fish in the Braun, but no one noticed them and I didn’t announce the fact that they should chew carefully.

I took the boys to the library and Spar this morning. I parked towards the bottom of town, close to the docks, so that I had to first walk past the library before walking up to Spar, so instead of taking both boys up the road, I left Caleb at the library by himself. I felt fully confident doing this, not only because I trust the people, but I trust him to behave himself. He boosted my confidence by saying “I’ll stay inside and I’ll watch my manners”. Aaron cried most of the way up because he also wanted to stay at the library. Bought bread and a box of cereal, because all we had left after breakfast this morning was half a serving of banana Pronutro, which wouldn’t have gone very far among three hungry people and a bear tomorrow morning. Met Caleb at the library, who had been chatting with the librarian in my absence. We chose the next 11 books rather quickly, because I needed to get back home to meet up with Steve to go over some songs for the GNC. He played the songs on the organ so that I could hear the melody lines. Some really good ones. We bought a lot of worship books at the Operation Mobilisation bookroom in Pretoria some time ago, one of them called “KidSource”, but mostly songs I don’t know. Anyway, I picked out some that looked good lyrically and easy-chordally, and have now learned them so can introduce them over the next few weeks. One is called “A wiggly waggly worm”. I have decided, or rather, the Lord laid it on my heart, to share the gospel on Saturday morning, both for the purpose of making sure everyone knows what the GNC is about and how to get saved, and also to teach them how to witness to their friends. There has been a lot of teaching on missionaries, and how they went to speak to people about Jesus, but do the kids know what they were saying about Jesus, or how to go about speaking about Jesus? I will be using the Wordless Book.

Nick has composed his first banjo piece, a little song about St Helena, “where all the stars can still be seen”. It’s a catchy tune. He was inspired after being outside the other night and looking at the sky. You can see the Milky Way.

I am taking Caleb to the doctor tomorrow at 11.45. Will let you know the result tomorrow night. I like the doctor, Dr Topliss, he is South African, from Cape Town, and has a typical flat South African accent. Reminds me of home! He is the one who attended to Aaron’s bee-stung thumb.

We regularly have power surges here, which somehow speeds the electric clocks up, so our bedroom alarm clock/radio is usually at least 5 minutes fast. The bad thing is that you never really know when it’s happened, so any electric clocks are entirely unreliable.