It is approaching the very busy season in Dramaland. We have missed several days of rehearsals for this year’s school play, Treasure Island, due to smoke haze that had lingered over Kuala Lumpur for several weeks. Much has been written about the causes of the haze from Indonesia and we wait for concerted inter-government effort to bring about an end to the fires and their economic need.
The loss of practice time has hit us hard and so one of the solutions that we have put in place is to get the cast to rehearse until 6.00pm instead of 4.30 on rehearsal days. This is helping catch up on lost time, but has made for tricky domestic arrangements for the Lawrence Clan. Rupert goes to cubs on a Wednesday but the extended time at school has meant that Trixie has had to spend a lot more time away from home than she had planned. 7.00am to 6.00pm days are not quite what her year four self had in mind at the start of the year, but it is what it is.
Today’s after school arrangements were particularly tricky to sort given that we had the following concurrent events:
- Play rehearsal for Edwin
- Parents’ evening for Me
- Bollywood celebration for Trixie from 5.00pm (which Lexi wanted to go to as well)
- Dance lesson for Edwin from 7.30pm
- And all with one car (as the other is being serviced).
So while I was doing the parents’ evening thing and Edwin rehearsed and Lexi and Rupert got themselves to my school and I dashed around trying to blag a second ticket for the Bollywood thing because it had sold out and I had forgotten to buy any tickets earlier in the week (and breathe), Trixie sat in the Drama office doing stuff, thinking about life in general and drawing pictures in the way that 8 year olds girls do.
Dressed in her best Bollywood outfit (she appears to have two, I don’t know how either, and kindly lent one to her best friend) she decided that she would use her time profitably by helping out Daddy and his two Drama teaching colleagues. As she sat on one of the wheelie chairs around the planning table her creative brain got to work.
A few weeks ago she commented on the number of wheelie chairs in the office. Why had we got six, she needed to know. Without thinking about it too carefully I told her that we had six so that we three could use them to have races around the Drama department and Drama office each day. I was helpfully backed up by my colleagues and then collectively we gave it little more thought.
When I got back from my parents evening I was greeted by a very proud and serious looking Trixie, complete with her “I have been a very helpful girl expression”. As pleased as punch she showed me the exact thing that the department was missing in the eyes of an eight year old: A wall-chart. Not just any old wall-chart. No. This wall chart, complete with dates, included columns for places, medals and names was everything that regular chair-racing Drama teachers could possibly want to help them keep a record of their departmental chair based endurance events. There was even an accompanying medal tally chart labelled “gold, silver and brons.”
Trixie was right. It was exactly what we needed and has taken up pride of place on the Happy Wall.