98. 14 weeks.

This is it; the last weekly update. And it will not, I fear, be a very long one. I have, you see, been at war today. I’ve seen some things in my life. I’ve climbed to over 4000m in the Alps. I’ve been charged by elephants and stood less than 20 metres from a wild lion. I’ve run with the bulls in Pamplona. I’ve been caught on a barbed wire fence as a bush-fire raced towards me. But I have never been through anything as harrowing as I did today. I was in a battle today.

Although I was wearing more comfortable pants.

The “Battle of the Choirs”. At the beginning of this year, the boy-child came home and announced that he had joined his school choir. This was a little surprising, as he had never expressed even the vaguest interest in singing before. I suspect that he found himself in a group of people who were all moving in the same direction, and simply followed them and did what they were doing. I suspect that that’s how most people end up with tattoos or Smart Cars. But join he did. And today we got to share in the fruits of his labour.

Convertibles. The last word in babe-magnetism.

A local school had organised an event called “The Battle of the Bands” as a way of raising funds for a cancer support organisation. Which sounds fun. It wasn’t. The organisers turned out to be criminally insane. We arrived there at One o’clock and got home at seven. Which is kind of a long day for a bunch of nine-year olds. And even longer for the parents of a four-year-old who has just discovered the joys of a fold-up theatre chair. I’ll tell you all about it soon, but for now, I will simply tell you that the day’s events included a man playing a five minute solo on a shofar (a trumpet made from a ram’s horn that plays a varied repertoire of one note) and a bunch of nine year olds singing “Go West”, a fabulous gay anthem written by the Village People, and let you draw your own conclusions.

A nice enough song. But a curious choice for an octogenarian choir-mistress at a conservative Jewish primary school.

And so to the update. I’m on post number 98 of 100 posts in 100 days. I’ve had 34000 views in that time. The end is not just in sight, it is upon me. On Tuesday. And then I have to go off and find a real job.

It’s been an interesting week. I wrote about my son’s soccer tournament, Myrrh trees (or rather their cousins), and hyenas. Then I got all preachy and wrote about canned hunting and freak shows on television. And then I got less preachy again and wrote about sex on aeroplanes.

It’s going to be interesting to stop doing this. Just two more days of wracking my brains for something to write about, and then I go back to writing when the mood takes me. I’m not even sure if I think that’s a good thing or a bad thing. There’s already been one vote today (My son’s choir won. So that was seven harrowing hours with a four-year-old and a folding chair well spent) so there’s no need for another one. Just send me a comment telling me what to do for a living. Nine-year-old choir competition judge and shofar soloist will not be considered.

Although I may be flexible on the shofar thing if I am allowed to choose my own groin-pouch and hat-jewel.