Emma.

I don't think I've introduced Em yet. We rather like her. Not of the mainstream, emotionally complex, loving, thoughtful, full of empathy and as mercurial as a monkey on Ritalin.

She's about to go on tour to Canada with her school band, (Nov 24 to Dec 11), so once again music is taking one of our girls to places and people they might not otherwise have the opportunity to discover. For my lovely Canadian bloggies who have asked about her itinerary:

She travels first to Vancouver where they stay for 4 nights, then on to Kamloops in British Columbia via the Kokahalla Highway, then to Kelowna, Vernon, on to Canmore through the Rockies and Banff, then Calgary, briefly at Drumheller, then Edmonton and home. Local schools are hosting them, and they'll be billeted by school families with a few nights here and there in hotels. The bands will play at each host school, but they'll also have time for an ice hockey game, lots of sightseeing and touring around and generally exhausting their teachers. They are very, very lucky kids.

Anyway, here she is, variously (because I still can't figure out how to format and caption photos properly):

1. At Lake Elizabeth in the Otway Ranges, Southern Victoria. The lake was formed after a landslide formed a natural dam wall in 1951. It took them a while to figure out why the river below had dried up, and when they went exploring, found this. Very isolated, beautifully eerie.

2. Singing in her school choir. She's in Ghanaian dress because their teacher did some amazing workshops in Ghana and came back to pass on the rhythms, songs and drumming techniques of the region. Magic.

3. With the saxophone that is taking her to Canada.

4. With the croquembouche I made as her 16th birthday cake. The rest of us got some eventually. And no, that's not a tatt. It's a pen doodle she probably did when she should have been paying attention in a maths class. Ah, well, nobody's perfect.