At an age when most kiddies are jigging to the Wiggles, his sense of rhythm is well developed and he relishes changes in tempo, adapting his gestures appropriately.

But this pales beside the way he feels the music, eyes gleaming as he anticipates some crashing percussion, then gently gliding through the gentler movements.  Watch and enjoy. It will make your day.

So I shall revel in my small but highly select, perceptive and altogether perspicacious readers and tell you that you are supercalifragelisticexpialidocious! Forgive me, but I am suffering the surfeit of seeing Mary Poppins last Sunday afternoon. It was wonderful. Even more wonderful were the faces of my grandchildren as they gazed at the stage and smiled with eyes like stars. Now that’s joy by the bucketload.

It is a truly marvelous show. Sparkling with wit, great songs, staging is fantastic. Altogether a 5 star theatrical experience. Wonder how long it will take for the littlies to think another theatrical experience is so wonderful? I still remember my first live musicals. The Pyjama Game with Toni Lamond and  Kismet with Hayes Gordon. I was hooked for life and still love them.

The King’s Speech is a tour de force. Who would have thought that one could make a compelling movie about a man with a stammer and his speech therapist? Yet it is so much more than that. It is about a man finding his voice and finding a friend. It is about a man so secure in himself that he holds to what experience has taught him in the face of establishment power.

Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush are both amazing in their roles. Firth is one of my favorite actors and he inhabits the role as if born with a stammer. His fight to regain his voice becomes the equal of any blockbuster where the hero shoots a dozen villains at a time with a souped up machine gun. And Rush’s Lionel is a well of compassion and empathy, rock solid in his companionship “under fire.”

So I thought I’d update you on Patricia. We nearly lost her between Christmas and New Year when she developed a serious case of pneumonia. Her doctor put her into hospital and a few days later she was a new woman. Home again, she puts me to shame. She irons, yes, irons, cooks (though she did consider meals on wheels for a bit till she decided she was doing OK) and last Tuesday asked us to take her to Bunnings to buy a shovel, hedge clippers, a pruning saw and other sundries. Behind her new flat, she has a lovely garden and is itching to get out there and cut back the geraniums that are running wild, pull out the dead roses and generally get it in order. We all decided discretion was the better part of valour and no one asked how she would manage a shovel when she uses a walker to walk! But she did say if she couldn’t manage it she’d ask someone to do her digging for her. Gotta love such optimism at an age when many people won’t even buy green bananas.

Mum

Though it really isn’t funny, we are LOL at our place as my Mum, just turned 90, just failed her assessment for household assistance for the frail aged. She has a bad foot and is often in pain, and she hoped for some government assistance with heavy cleaning and so on. It didn’t help that the day the assessor arrived unannounced, that Mum had a boiler of soup on the stove. She doesn’t need help to shower herself and so she failed the assessment for any government help. When she tried to explain that she’d had surgery on her foot and it hadn’t worked and she was in chronic pain she was told tartly, Surgery doesn’t come under the guidelines! So while what I think about a government refusing assistance to a very elderly pensioner, which is miles cheaper than having to support her in a nursing home (where she would qualify for support) is unprintable, it is marvelous that she still enjoys to cook and bake. Loves to make us soup for when we visit and still does her own washing and ironing! She’s a marvel. So keep on failing Mum and I hope to God you passed the genes onto me.

An update on that story. Mum is still managing at home but has been really sick. Terrible respiratory infections at the moment and Mum’s has gone onto her chest. She has had the stuffing knocked out of her with having to move apartments because of the rebuilding program at her retirement community, but mostly because her beloved sister fell and was badly injured. She is now in respite care, after a spell in hospital, then rehabilitation. Nevertheless, when we visited today, Mum was sharply dressed, had soup out ready for Paul for his lunch and was enjoying watching the baby sparrows knocking at her back door hoping for more crumbs. Go Mum.

I love it’s power to sooth the nerve endings one minute and have you up dancing the next. Ditto with laughing and crying. So today it’s thank God for the music.

* You get to guess the acronym

**That’s not an indulgence when you’ve smashed all the old ones!

*** Well, OK yesterday I browsed so long I missed the postie and my medication had to go to the Post Office, and I got caught in the rain there on the way to pick it up and then it wasn’t there and then … but they did hear my pleas and refrigerated it for me, so all was well in the end.