The cast is off!

Tom enjoying a celebratory McFlurry!

The big news story this week was Tom getting his cast taken off.  His arm was extremely whiffy afterwards and he was very careful with it for at least two days.  The challenge is to keep it unbroken for the next 2 weeks and then we're off to Fiji where he can swim all day every day and strengthen it up.  


On Friday I was sitting at home minding my own business when the door bell rang and there was my neighbour asking me to come next door with her.  She's currently getting the house painted so I thought she might want me to see what it was looking like.  When we got inside she said to the painters "this is Lenka who has been playing the piano".  It transpires that one of the painters was a professional musician back in his home town in Iran and he had greatly enjoyed listening to my piano practice whilst he painted particularly when I played Rondo alla Turca which is one of his favourite pieces.  He put me on the spot and asked me to play it for him then and there on Frances' piano.  I really do not like playing in front of an audience and so I tried to wriggle my way out of it but there was no way I could so we struck a deal that I'd play for them and he would bring his instrument, the Setar, the next day and play something for us.  The Setar is a member of the Lute family and comes from Persia.  Se means three and tar means strings (hence the "tar" in guitar) in Persian however a fourth string was added to the instrument two and a half centuries ago.  

The Setar, Imat our musician and Geoff

So on Saturday afternoon we all headed round to Geoff and Frances' house and held an impromptu concert.  The painters played the Setar and a traditional Persian drum - it was truly stunning.  The Setar sounds like a cross between a banjo and a harpsichord which is quite hard to imagine but it's a beautiful sound and is alternately very old sounding but also very modern.  The concert continued with all the kids having a go: Tom played and sang "Horse with No Name" on the guitar, Tess played a small piece on the clarinet, George played two jazz pieces on the piano, Charlie sang and her friend played an Adele piece on the French Horn.  It was wonderful!  We had our friends Scott and Grazia coming for dinner and they turned up at our house to find no-one at home so we dragged them round to listen to the concert too and then everyone came back to our house for dinner.  Everyone was on great form after our injection of culture and it was a fantastic evening.  


Jules has worked hard this weekend on decking the stairs leading down to the bottom of the garden.  I didn't manage to get a photo but they look fantastic and hopefully will make a big difference to the kids using that area.  We're also planning on building a cubby house down there but we're still trying to decide on a design and where exactly to build it.