On Saturday Hug was ever-so-proud to attend his very first Writers Festival!
I was very proud of him too. Lovely & I did come along to make sure everything was fine but Hug sat with one of his long-time friends (another 5 year old - too cute :) and her mama while we wandered about. He sat through 3 hours of sessions in the Kids Tent & I'm sure he would have stayed longer if I hadn't said it was time to go! We hadn't even actually read any books by the first 2 authors (each author had a 45 minute session with a 15 minute break before the next) but he'd read lots by the next author - his daddy :)
Lovely & I popped back to the tent for T's session but had to leave when Lovely threw a rather badly timed tantrum - whoops! I think it was the pressure of knowing that he had to be quiet for daddy's sessions, poor sweetheart :(
Anyway, I was telling T about everything last night including how a kindly old man had come up to us & talked to Lovely to try and help him out of the tantrum ("a stranger can do that sometimes", he told me with wisdom) & how he had even sung him 2 choruses of the Thomas the Tank Engine song which his grandson had apparently taught him! I mentioned that the man had then proceed to enter the Green Room tent & that I presumed he must have been one of the authors speaking at the festival. When I described what he looked like T went & got a photo & asked if this was the man I was talking about & anyway, to cut a long story short (or not, sorry I've not exactly been concise here ;) the Thomas-singing man turned out to be Thomas Kinneally - one of Australia's most respected authors who wrote Schindler's Ark the book upon which the film Schindler's List was based. All I can say is... Wow! Thanks for the tunes Tom ;)
Aside from that the highlight of the festival for Lovely was meeting this giant Spotted- tailed Quoll. He *loved* it! We had to follow the Quoll around for almost 20 minutes!
We finished the day with a celebratory dinner with T at a cute noodle shack we'd never tried before. Yum :)
