Family

4-6 November 2018

Between the last post and this one I attended and presented at the Practical Pedagogies conference in Cologne, Germany. My post of that time can be found on my education blog: 12 Golden Nuggets.

I have just spent the weekend with Andrew and Sidney in Chiswick, a suburb of London. My daughter, Emma, has been travelling with me since Paris and had one night with us in London but had to return to Paris yesterday. Andrew and Sidney live very close to the local station but it is a station without a lift or escalator so carrying my 25kg suitcase up and down the stairs was quite the workout. Even after I left a dozen A5 Think Learn Act notepads and packet of post-it notes at their house it was quite the effort to lug it up the stairs to the platform. 

Andrew is my cousin, just a few years older than me. Twice a year my family would meet up with his family in Ballina, the home of our mutual grandparents. Loads of fond childhood memories, particularly involving Andrew and Jo, the two cousins closest to me in age and interests, are from hanging out in Ballina and Brisbane where they lived during their teenage years. 

Due to weddings, funerals and Christmases, Andrew and I have seen a bit of each other over the last few years, despite living on opposite sides of the planet, but this weekend we were able to spend precious time with just the two of us. It’s nice that after all these years we still have a relationship where we can talk honestly and intensely about a number of topics. The highlight was walking around Chiswick Park, including a stop for scones with jam and cream. Last night we had roast at a local pub and then watched some TV. It was such a lovely time I didn’t want to leave.

However, now I am on a train to Birmingham, Brum, as the locals say, I am becoming excited about the next learning adventure. Tomorrow I will be attending a Doctoral Day at Coventry University and the following two days I am at an Entrepreneurship conference with an Enterprise Education stream, featuring some of the gurus I referenced in my MRES thesis. I am sure there will be a summary of this time on my education blog in a few days time.