teaching
Fruits of Passion: Walks and Talks in the Bane of Briz
One of the hardest things about being a pool deck supervisor – something I am when I’m not in the water – is finding something new (and not too lame) to say during the pre-class teacher huddle.
This week I went with the ‘p’ word.
It was going to be a long afternoon. ‘Use your passion,’ I said, ‘to get you through. Let your love of swimming bring your lessons to life.’
Luckily no-one laughed. Instead they glanced meaningfully at the parents and kids massing beside the pool.
‘Off you go then,’ I added, in something of an anticlimax.
And off they went, emanating passion.
My love of swimming is matched by my love of fruit. (Yes, fruit!)
I start every day with a slice of paw paw (aka papaya) and a glass of water infused with lemon juice. I end every day with a bowl of fruit salad. (I’ll be happy if the one thing my kids remember from their childhoods is our nightly fruit salad.)
The week was a special one on the fruit front.
On Sunday the family and I walked around the base of Tibrogargan, one of the eleven Glass House Mountains.
The circuit was good but what followed was even better: cheap passion fruit on sale at a roadside stall. Heavy black wrinkled globes. Tangy juice-filled bulbs.
Passion fruit in the shops is usually too anaemic and expensive to buy. (And sadly I don’t have a vine.) So the find was a godsend.
Actually, that’s how the fruit got its name: Christian missionaries interpreted its flower as a religious symbol when they encountered the plant in South America in the 1700s.
We’ve spent the week savouring this manna from heaven.
I’m even considering going for another walk – there are ten more Glass House Mountains to circumambulate, after all!
To end, good news : I started working again on my kids’ book.
I didn’t do so, though, until I’d had a brain wave for a crime novel, one set in a quaint English village, the kind where murder is common (in British television shows, at least).
The village’s new mayor vows to put an end to the carnage. But to what lengths will she go to stop the killing?
To find out you’ll have to read The Murderous Mayor (when I write it).
Which is, like, never!