Much to celebrate

And so it came to pass that a local girl fell ill with the H1N1 virus AKA swine flu, passed it to her brother who took it to school where eleven of his primary school class mates fell ill resulting in the swift declaration by the Education Bureau on Thursday that all primary schools would be shut with immediate effect from tomorrow (Friday) for two weeks until 25th June.

We leave Hong Kong on 24th June so for my kids that was it. Instead of worrying about closure, end of term parties of saying goodbye to their mates they came home, high fived each other and danced around the living room to “London Calling” by the Clash, rather appropriately I thought.

This is the news I’ve been hoping for. Now we don’t even have to go through the motions of going to school there’ll be Worlds Apart style home education: Ocean Park to see the red pandas, museums, hiking and the beach with a bit of music practice and swimming thrown in. Apparently the children are supposed to be doing learning@home via email but I suspect we may find our computer has mysteriously gone on the blink. It’s not as if they can do much about it after all, we’re out of here.

The only fly in the ointment is that the Hong Kong skyline project, for which we have built THIS: was due in on Monday. Which means we have cut out 680 round windows for nothing. Darn.

I am so tired. All friends appear to be determined to have just one last dinner/lunch/night out. My husband and I (how regal that sounds) are being more sociable than ever before. We can’t keep it up for long but at least now the prison camp has closed we’ll be able to have a bit of a lie-in.

This week also saw the extraordinary U-turn of Clarabel’s new Ma’am who rang me on Monday to say six weeks after offering her the job she was having serious doubts about taking her on. I sighed, wondered why she was telling me and not Clarabel and realised we only had two weeks in which to find Clarabel a new employer. Fearing Clarabel would be devastated I sat her down and explained that we might need to start searching again. Clarabel said simply it was probably for the best as their existing helper had told her she would be their seventh second helper in 18 months. Within three days we had three interviews lined up for her whereupon the new Ma’am turned around and said she was very disappointed that Clarabel had let her down. She would have been a wonderful addition to their family and what a shame she couldn’t have told her herself. I’m still reeling at that one.

I’ve saved the best til last. Our tenants went back to look at the all-singing-all-dancing house my husband saw last week and decided they would take it after all. Which means, dare I say it, that in August we move back to our very own house on Putney Common. Yippee! The fact that our new open plan large scale Hong Kong furniture won’t actually fit into our narrow, small-roomed London town house is beside the point. We’re going home.