No two ways about it - this is a brag post. I try hard not to post about my two daughters, cos they basically win at everything they do and people are not terribly interested in someone posting a string of boasts. I sometimes wonder if they are really my daughters, cos their achievements are way ahead of mine. I"m gonna do it this time, but I"ll try to restrain myself in future.
They have had a lot of their schooling in Australia. Rosie went right through at a very nice boarding school, finishing two years ago. At the same time, Rachel, who had two years left to do, got herself a music scholarship to Geelong Grammar, which is basically Australia"s equivalent of Eton, and switched to there. [Yeah, that"s right, they both finished Grade 8 music at about age 13, one sax & piano, the other clarinet & piano - what did I tell you?]. A lot of prominent people have been schooled at Geelong, including Prince Charles, Rupert Murdoch, the King of Malaysia, some Australian Prime Ministers and so on. Even if you do nothing and just pass through, it is an amazing formative experience and the contacts made are unsurpassed. But she didn"t just pass through. She is coming to the end of her time there (their academic year is opposite to ours - ie summer holidays are in December/January) and yesterday she won the Elisabeth Murdoch Award for Student of the Year out of one of the most talented groups in Australia. Just thought I"d tell you.
[For those who are not Australian, Elisabeth Murdoch (mother of Rupert) is a prominent philanthropist, whose achievements it is not worth bothering to start listing. Still going strong at 103.]
Rosie is doing okay too. She took a gap year and is currently stressing over upcoming first year exams in Medicine. Don"t think she needs to stress, though, cos last week she got 100% in something that counts for 10% of the year.
Okay, that"s it - I"ll go back to my usual level, posting about blumpkins and suchlike.