Ollie and Oliver at Oliver's fifth birthday party. My Oliver is on the right.
What can you say about a four year old that he won't tell you himself? A steady increase in his vocabulary allows him to not only express himself but to convince you that he in fact is right in his assessment! If the adage that you learn a lot about yourself through your kids is true then I have a learned a lifetime of lessons in the last year. We are now dealing with a little boy who is bright, a loving and attentive older brother, a headstrong adversary (I have no idea where he gets that from), a determined learner and the perfect son.
He does things on his own terms, he'll learn to play soccer at his pace, he'll drop the stabiliser wheels on his bicycle because he wants to and he'll set out to be the best swimmer in his class. In the past he wanted to be the best by osmosis, now he understands the concept of practice and application and uses it at will.
If one thing stands out it's his fantastic memory and attention to detail. He understands the logic behind the way things work. A certain incident is not far from my mind. We were on our way to school and a taxi behaved as only taxis do. A stream of expletives left my mouth which visibly distracted the taxi driver from his task of attempting to cause an 18 car pile-up. Oliver questioned me as to whether I knew that taxi driver, when I responded in the negative he asked me if I would like to be spoken to like that. Food for thought but not enough to satiate my eternal disdain of taxi drivers.
He's now five and approaching a whole new series of challenges at school which he is determined to face head on. He's a beautiful boy, a wonderful son, a stunning older brother and our getting bigger little boy. Happy birthday Oliver and thank you for the last five years.
By now we all know that Oliver was born on Peter Green's birthday - Chris Daffy played a special dedication to Oliver on his Sunday morning show on LM Radio. He had me beaming from ear to ear and Oliver was mesmerised by Chris' dedication (is he on the radio for real life?). Chris played Oh Well but that's too obvious for me.
I have long sung this song to babies to get them to sleep, Oliver has heard it a thousand times and James is knocking on that number. I prefer the Boston live versions. I could only find this one
06 - Various Artists - Fleetwood Mac - Jumping at the Shadows
And not forgetting an Ollie Halsall song. Ollie had a wicked sense of humour and it is no more apparant than on this song, that's Ollie on vocals too.
And because this is the last year that Oliver will be able to count his age on one hand here is the original version of Jumping at Shadows. Duster Bennett is worthy of checking out. What you are hearing is a live take and he's playing all the instruments at the same time - some people call this a multi-instrumentalist, I call it impossible. Fantastic! (just like Oliver)
04 - Duster Bennett - Jumping At Shadows
Thanks for the cool tunes! Enjoying the BEE posts! Keep pushing to get Rob to resign.
The current BEE SED and ED codes have allowed us to get great support for our work both as a community centre with its core being education and personal development in a township called Etwatwa, and in developing micro-entrepreneurs.
Isn't it ironic that Rob's proposed amendments will literally undo and reverse any progress made in terms of EDUCATION, PERSONAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT, CARE FOR THOSE WHO NEED IT MOST AND ECONOMIC KNOWLEDGE AND ENTREPRENEURIAL BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT.
Seems Rob will do his best to destroy real education, development and business growth.
Business investment and ultimately employment creation follows risk based incentive programs - whether those be tax incentives, capital incentives, employment incentives. Companies overseas get great tax incentives for donating into charities - and so foster good socio-economic development and corporate responsibility.
But what is Rob's master plan - not incentives but PENALTIES. How can penalties foster growth and development?
Sorry Rob - you played your trump card and its a joker! Out with Rob and his team of mis-advisors! Time for Rob to say goodbye.
Posted by: Al4victory | October 30, 2012 at 01:54 PM
This is the kind of comment that a blogger can only dream about. You've got it so right. It becomes more and more apparent that the new codes are pandering to a very small black minority with little or no regard for anyone else. Why have they put in three pages on black VCs and not made any adjustments to broad-based ownership which is what Rob has been banging on about for a few years now.
Thank you for this
Posted by: Paul Janisch | October 30, 2012 at 04:55 PM