EC-Rider Travels

Monday was a bit of a hallelujah day as my Indian visa arrived and was ready for collection from the unbelievably chaotic VFS office. This has been a long ol’ saga, with Sarah doing so much groundwork for me before I arrived, she was virtually on first named terms with all the staff! Determined to see it through to the end, Sarah insisted on coming down-town with me to witness the final hand-over!

In the evening a lovely ‘ballet’ friend of Sarah’s, Julie, came to dinner…. which if you can believe, I offered to cook ….. cheese soufflé of course! Julie had trained at The Royal Ballet School and had been teaching in Melbourne almost ever since. It was so interesting to hear their views of the new RBS Affiliate Teachers training programme, which they admired so much and so wanted to do, but could not see how it could work in the RAD dominated ballets schools of Melbourne. Sad to hear. All the same we had a very jolly ballet chatting evening – Tim having sensibly escaped to have dinner with a friend!

On Tuesday morning, I headed to Tassie! Tim kindly took me to the airport (he apparently loves going to the airport!) and I took the one hour flight to Hobart. Here I was greeted by the wonderful smiling face of Justin Bowman-Shaw and his younger daughter Sophia. They are in the middle of adding the most amazing extension to their home which, as in the UK, is taking rather longer than anticipated. Meanwhile they are renting a very nice house about ten minutes away in central Hobart. Alice is away for a couple of days so it was just us and their their other lovely daughter, Cecilia. I last saw the girls nine or ten years ago when they were about 8 and 6, so was rather amazed by what greeted me! Justin cooked us a delicious supper while we had a good ol’ catch-up.