Today was an artistic day for the Lever family. Mathilde had her ballet performance in the afternoon and Erik was singing in the school variety show in the evening.

Mathilde has her ballet lessons in the squash courts of Rebecca Court, one of the compounds on Banana Island. Her performance was also held there. They all looked very pretty in their little leotards. Mathilde wore the blue one I bought her in Cape Town last Christmas. The other girls had little pink dresses. All the mothers and/or nannies were there to watch. Inger-Lise was stuck in traffic coming back from VI, so it was just me and Joy to watch.

Mathilde was a little angel, of course. She did very well to dance with the others but was a bit distracted by having her Daddy watching. Inger-Lise arrived with Erik and Daniel just as they all lay down in a circle in their grand finale and missed the lot, poor thing.

After dinner in the evening, we left Mathilde behind with Joy and went to the school with Erik and Daniel. The traffic was terrible coming under Falamo bridge on VI but we got to school in good time for Erik to meet up with the rest of the group: Amy & Justin Taylor, Sophie Grisdale, Serena Nanji, Ayisha Faiz, Claire May, Isabella Thompson, Aydan Reynard, Anthony Mensah and Victoria Halliday.

It was nice to see the children performing. There was everything from a solo piano recital (Brandon Bosman) to Karate (Oliver Bejer) and Gymnastics (Sophie Davies). Erik & Co. sang Beautiful Creatures, which started with a solo by Amy Taylor followed by the chorus walking on with their cuddly toy animals. Erik was pleased when I gave him a wolf whistle at the end!

Jeremy