Paperwork done

This evening we drove to Rockingham to meet with the vendor of the unit we are buying to sign the offer and acceptance papers. There were many more papers than just the offer and acceptance.

The facilitator, the principal of the company Go Private introduced himself and gave me the once over. 'I think I know you from somewhere?' he said. And as quite often is the case he turned out to be an ex student of mine that I taught in 1977. Fortunately he was a good one and had a few good words to say about me.

I remember him well. I taught him in a class of bright kids and the subject was Electricity: low voltage of course. I recall that an option class had collapsed because a teacher had left and I was told to take the class. In those days I was able to show the boss that electricity would be a worthwhile subject and a new option was created for one semester. Couldn't do that these days! I started off with batteries and bulbs and we created circuits in parallel and series.

Later we made battery powered games of skill and even progressed to simple pinball machines made with solenoids I gathered from the scrap bins at an auto electrics workshop. Karl, my ex-student remembered these activities well. I was pretty chuffed that he remembered so much of my lessons thirty years ago.

I made another lot of chilli sauce today. I didn't want to waste the bag of chillies I bought a few days ago. I decided to keep the chilli seeds, dry them and grown my own. As I was collecting the seed I thought that I should do a 'Tom Lehrer' (Poisoning Pigeons in the Park) and scatter some seeds amongst the biscuit crumbs I spread for the magpies. Joan didn't think that was nice, so I decided not to.

I missed out on a ten year reunion of ex-students of my old high school last Friday. I was looking at the photos on FaceBook and I received an email from an ex-student saying that a few people asked after me on the night. He suggested that he organise a few beers at my local to catch up with some of them. I thought it was a great idea, but suggested it should be at our place so that I don't have to drive home. I look back on the 1997 cohort as a truly wonderful group of kids, now 27 years of age. Joan reminded me today that I am now 68!