taxi4ballet

Hope everyone has a lovely time - we attended the Audition Insight day yesterday, which was really helpful and which dd enjoyed very much.

I totally understand your point of view, Jellybeans, especially in this day and age, when we all go to tremendous lengths to protect our children from possible 'unwelcome' interest (especially on the internet, if you know what I mean!). Edited to add: Perhaps this topic might merit a new thread on how we as parents can deal with having children performing in public, while at the same time protecting their privacy?

The advice we were given by a professional choreographer friend was 'Get her out there, get her noticed and get her name known by the right people'. I think that if I decided to enter my child for a competition such as this I would have considered very carefully the possible implications of any publicity that would go along with it, and that would influence my decision whether to enter or not.

This is quite a thorny issue, isn't it? I suppose that having a career in the performing arts inevitably comes with a certain amount of loss of personal privacy, and perhaps the question should be: at what point is the cut-off when children are involved?

I used to work in a bank, and one morning, we all turned up for work to find the front door unlocked and the alarm switched off. (Cue panic-stricken phone call to the police so they could come and check the building for intruders). It turned out that the previous evening the last person to leave thought another keyholder was still there - they weren't! Another banking tale - a client came in and took out a loan for a huge sum. He immediately went and bought an ocean-going yacht with the bank's money and disappeared off into the sunset, never to be seen again!

Custard powder (when butter-fingered husband drops the container and covers everything in the kitchen... have you ever tried to wipe that stuff up? Yellow streaks everywhere!) Cold draughts Blunt scissors

Only ever fill your sugar bowl a quarter-full. I always wondered why my late mum did this, until I dropped a full bowl on the floor and found out why! We were crunching it underfoot for weeks

A girl from dd's old dance school auditioned for quite a few different places, and got offered two with DaDas, not her top choices, and she said what a good job it was that she auditioned for several. If she had only gone to her favourites she would have missed out altogether.

I emailed him several weeks before we were going to London, and were able to arrange an appointment no problem.

I thought it might be fun if we could share handy hints/money saving ideas... Here's mine to start: If you've run out of liquid soap, buy a giant economy supermarket bottle of bubble bath and use it to refill the dispenser (I reckon it's all much the same stuff anyway).

Last time I bought a mobile phone, I insisted that they showed me how to permanently switch off the predictive text feature before I even left the shop!

Halloween is a bit over the top now, isn't it? When I was a kid - not all that long ago - you might have spotted the odd teenager prancing about with a sheet over their head, but that was about all. Seems like it's just another till-ringing exercise for the supermarkets if you ask me... ps: desperately trying to puncuate properly!

Has Chunkydog learned how to unlock it by herself? (Perhaps she didn't want to wake you up yet again)!!!

There is an ad for oven chips on tv at the moment, exhorting their Crispy-ness and Fluffy-ness. Er - not exactly...

Not completely blank, I hope !!

A few years ago, a friend of ours decided to join MENSA after taking a few IQ tests and doing rather well at them. He told us about this, and several weeks later, we asked him whether he had been accepted for membership. He rather sheepishly admitted that his application had been returned because he'd forgotten to put his cheque in the envelope Doh!

We know someone who can't do splits and she got in Tring CBA. Always worth remembering it doesn't matter how flexible you are, you still need to be able to dance !

Not wishing to steer anyone away from this lovely forum, but there might be some useful details on dance.net - there seem to be quite a lot of US members - worth a look?

Who knows what they are after at these auditions!!! Perhaps looking at splits is just a very small part of assessing a trainable physique and potential for the future.

!

Which is the cheapest? (!)

I might get dd a sewing basket and fill it with needles, thread, pointe shoe ribbon etc as she has started to show an interest in doing her own shoes - long may it continue!

eloise - I found it in the shop, and it's also in their Xmas gift catalogue, but I was going to show a friend at work, and couldn't find it online either. Incidentally, there were a lot of gaps on the shelf - selling fast I think!

I know it's only October(!) Found a lovely range of gift toiletries/make-up by Ted Baker in Boots the other day, with a ballet dancer theme.

My nephew's got it on his phone, really handy!