Concerts

Regular Elk's Street followers will know that the little boys have music as one of their hobbies. Recently, there have been a couple of concerts.

For those of you who don't believe that Thomas really does play French horn, below a video as evidence.





Thomas was playing a Russian folk song (Korobeiniki) about an itinerant trader and was accompanied by Henry.

There were a couple of wobbly bits in the middle but for a first major performance Thomas did well. The boys are very different - Henry plays horribly at home but generally pulls off a good performance when under pressure; Thomas, on the other hand, plays much better at home than in public. Apologies for the lousy video quality, your correspondent is not the world's best cameraman, and the position of my seat meant the piano rather overshadowed the horn.

If you want to hear a more professional version of the song, click here for the song in Finnish, and here for the song in Russian. And the styles are very different!

For the little boys the next performance was at a concert on Fathers' Day in aid of diabetes research. The choir of the primary school's music classes, grades three to five, sang a few songs and some of the children in Henry's class had instrumental solos.

Below, a few photos.

The choir with Henry's teacher at the front. (Thomas in the front row on the far left.)


Henry standing tall in the back row.


Thomas in the front row.


Thomas one more time.

Thomas is really not keen on being in the limelight - and then they put him in the front row, poor chap!

(Close-up photos courtesy of Tuomo)

Floods

Followers of world news will have noticed that a few weeks ago northern Malaysia and southern Thailand suffered rather bad flooding. Although it is the monsoon season and heavy rain is normal, this year things were particularly bad.

Below a few photos of Kwan's house.

The entrance to the house.

The garden.


The road and the neighbour's compound.

Luckily, the water didn't enter the house, as it is slightly raised, but the compound was a mess. And the snakes fleeing the water were no doubt a little scary!

(Photos stolen from Kwan's FB)

Autumn Migration

Every autumn Elk's Street is a stopping-off point for waxwings (bombycilla garrulus) on their migration to warmer climes. They are very pretty with their dun colour, the yellow flashes on their wings, and their 'tufty' hair style.

Below a couple of photos of our yearly visitors.






The birds rest in our garden, snacking on any apples left in the apple trees and gobbling berries in the hawthorn hedges. After a some minutes' rest they then continue on their way. In the past they would arrive in their thousands, but recently their numbers have dwindled.

We wish all waxwings a safe journey and hope to welcome them back next year.

Mushrooms

There are many styles of management, for example, seagull management. The prevailing style at the Elk's Street workplace is mushroom management - keep people in the dark, cover them with compost, and threaten to cut off their heads.


In honour of that fraudulent art, management science, a couple of mushrooms:

In case you are wondering? Yes, they are poisonous.