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A very fine morning’s flying, then into Songmark for lunch. We had been out very early to catch the cool morning air (it is a hundred and five in the shade at lunchtime) and missed picking up the early post. A letter from Home, in Father’s writing – the sight of familiar stamps and postmarks reminding me that we only have four weeks of term remaining.

An awful shock – Father writes that he has been seconded to assist the French Army in the modern “entente cordiale” spirit, and will be spending Summer in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean, helping them plan out the anti-tank defenses of Kerguelen. And this was just after I had written telling him of all my plans for the summer, including the steam catapult for launching the rebuilt Flying Flea #8 over the kitchen garden. It really is the most beastly luck, how he gets called away at all the wrong times.

It was all very well to spend a month with Helen and Molly on the fishing fleet at Easter, but two months is really an awful hole in the social calendar. Definitely, I will have to put on my thinking cap as to the best use of the time. Looking at the newsreels from home, fashions have already changed twice since I have been out here – not that I follow fashion, of course, such frivolity being frowned on at St. Winifred’s.

One happy thought is that my allowance has been increased, the drafts to be paid to me weekly via the main bank on Sunset Square, Casino Island. Monthly would have been handier, then I could have got a ticket home to see Father before he departs, and possibly travel out with him as far as Aden, not so far from Jasbir’s home. This will pretty much tie me to the local area, wherever else I go in the week.

Thinking of Jasbir, her own dorm has been doing rather well at the Dance school, having trounced a quite senior class from the Casino Island Cooperative High School last week. We are starting to train as a double-sized team with them, which is proving an interesting challenge. Irma Bundt being of Maria’s type, we have a powerful backing “pivot” when putting together dance moves. Li Han and Jasbir are quite remarkably fast, and I fear we would be very hard-pressed to keep pace with them without our extra exercises. Certainly, this time last year none of us would have stood an earthly chance.

Folk are already talking about the end-of term “exams”, which only partly consist of filling in papers. Of course, the third-years are getting ready for putting their skills to the test for real – making their way in the world, with no re-sits available for failure. We shall miss Noota, Erica and Conchita – the only dorm who really went out of their way to help us first-years!

Our three friends are deep in plans of setting up in the prospecting business, having made a good impression with the Tanoaho family on the Cranium Island trip. Not, they point out, in actual prospecting – the jungles and dockside taverns are full of grizzled prospectors who have spent a lifetime searching to little avail. They plan to be in mining support – find the one prospector in the hundred who has struck it lucky, and get his product out to where folk are waiting with ships and money – a far more reliable way to earn a shilling.

It might be a good time to jot down how our own dorms have done so far – nearly three terms have honed us into a very varied pack, much to my surprise. Back at St. Winifred’s, the idea was to rub off one’s sharp corners and produce keen team players – here it is more like flint-knapping, trying to put on the sharpest edges that skillfully applied pressure can produce.

Jasbir and Co – absolutely dance-crazy, and will probably get on the stage next year despite anything our Tutors say. They are not quite so fanatical about exercise as us (read, "as Maria") but they seem to take all the prizes where a gym or a rock wall is in sight.

Madelene X – has quite a problem keeping up in the practical classes, but absolutely shines when paperwork needs doing. She has Susan DeRiuz in her dorm, the maths brain, who can do things in her head most of us need three minutes with a slide-rule to get almost right. And she never gets lost – it is quite uncanny.

Prudence Akroyd’s dorm is definitely a success in a way – they must be the most popular, depending of course how one defines it. They are getting quite a reputation on the sports field as well as off it – drawing an admiring audience of a certain type from all over the island to watch them play. Volleyball, tennis and swimming are their great strengths, and this term they have joined a formation swimming team that is often used as extras by film companies. This prompted Beryl’s tasteless but intriguing question, “If one of a team of synchronised swimmers drowns, do they all have to?”

Missy K is having an awful time with Beryl – Beryl wants to join our dorm, but even if we wanted her, it would unbalance the numbers even more (despite the occasional problem with Molly and Maria, I wouldn’t trade them for their weight in gold, not even Maria’s weight.) Her other dorm mate, Adele Beasley, is surprisingly colourless for a Songmark student, and her main claim to fame is the time she has spent under our Matron’s care for minor accidents. She is skilled enough in the air, but has broken more crockery than the rest of us put together, and managed to fall downstairs twice last week. Not someone you really want packing your parachute.

As for ourselves – we might not have won all the prizes, but I doubt anyone else has had as much adventure! Not that we really plan to – much of it just seems to happen on its own accord. Miss Devinski has commented that was true of the causes of the Great War, too.

Quite a scorcher indeed – we managed to get late passes for the dance school, which in the height of summer is only doing its more advanced and strenuous classes in the cool of the evening. The morning was spent with some of the Third-years, Daphne and Noota amongst them, as we went on a semi-official trip to South Island to watch some local sporting events.

I hardly recognised Haio Beach from our Winter explorations – seeing it crowded with tourists and concession stalls came as rather a shock. On the South-facing beaches they have what Casino Island does not – a clear view out into the open Pacific, the waves sweeping straight in through gaps in the reef. Despite the fine local weather there must be a typhoon out there somewhere – the waves were huge, and sweeping straight in at us from the Southwest.

The main competition was a peculiar game that Prudence’s dorm have already tried by their accounts – a traditional Hawaiian sport called “surfing”. One stands, or tries to stand, on a long polished plank floating just offshore, then paddle onto the top of the wave as it breaks. Most of the tourists who tried it fell off immediately, though some of the locals (of Hawaiian descent, one assumes) can stay on all the way to the beach.

Molly and Helen had their cameras out – certainly, quite a sight to record for posterity. With the spread of tourists and “Euro” beliefs, old traditions like these will probably die out even in the remoter islands, which is a pity. As Molly points out, new crazes spread from Civilisation to the backwoods, and not visa versa.

Daphne demonstrated how to stand on a “board” as they are called, and seemed quite glum to realise she had just three more weekends left. She pointed out what I had not really considered – in September we will be second-years, and responsible for keeping a sharp eye on the new bunch! A frightening prospect, if any of them are like Molly or Beryl (and given Songmark’s growing reputation, they will be. No doubt at all, they will be.)

Prudence was along with the rest of her dorm, who showed remarkable skill on the Hawaiian “boards”. I recognised their various native friends, whom I recall them trying to show round Songmark. I would have thought they knew better even then to try it against our Tutors – who knew just what they were about when they put that dorm together. Ada Cronstein is a particularly extreme case – “anything in a grass skirt” seems to be her motto. Easy to see why she was swapped for Adele Beasley, as she is very much at home in Prudence’s band. At least, they will not have to worry about taking Precautions as the rest of us do.

Thinking of which, I was introduced to Tahni, Prudence’s friend. She is definitely not of Hawaiian stock – spotted Hyenas are from Kenya and such places, and a rare sight around here. I had heard about Hyena girls being “different” – and as Tahni wears a definitely tight stretch-fit bathing costume, I can see the stories seem to be quite true.

A strenuous Sunday again, though mercifully without any brush fires. We have kept up with the self-defence classes, though Miss Devinski has said we have finished our punitive month of extra drill – as with dancing, the more one practices the better. In fact, after awhile it gets almost addictive: right now it would feel rather odd not to be up first thing and working flat-out.

Beryl is very keen on self-defence: she demonstrated the use she can put her croquet hoops and spikes to in a dire emergency. The hoops are quarter-inch tempered steel rods, ground needle-sharp at the tips – and she can sink all five of them into a telegraph pole at ten paces, about as fast as one can see her hand move. Molly was most impressed. The croquet balls are solid steel of about a pound weight, and with her old school scarf as a sling she is highly accurate to fifty paces. Prevention is better than cure, she says, and indeed she can flatten a potential mugger before he has even thought of robbing her.

Still, after two hours hammering round the track with Maria behind us bellowing like a drill-sergeant to pick our paws up, and another hour practicing double hammerlocks and jujitsu throws, we were very glad to relax in Church, listening to Reverend Bingham. His Parable of the Actress and the Bishop was definitely – unusual, though certainly memorable. I think it must be the heat; it is a hundred and ten degrees outside and he is still wearing his full ceremonial outfit, tight collar and all. Maria says her priest is down to a sort of waiter’s clip-on white front and collar, plus of course his hat.

After one sort of Church, Helen and I met up with Saimmi, for our lessons in local folklore. Friday night is one of the main celebrations of the local calendar, and Saimmi hints that we may be welcome there. From what she tells us, she has been working hard on persuading her Church leaders to let us take part in the ceremonies – I hope we do not disappoint her.

I enquired of her sister – it seems that Moeli is doing very well, and is expecting any day now. Saimmi mentioned that I might see the whole family – rather odd, as I thought I had met the Hoele’toemi clan by now. Possibly there will be cousins coming over for the main celebrations.

Climbing again, though without a rock face in sight. Plenty of ropes, though – we are back over on Moon Island, where the towers we used for parachuting practice are being climbed the hard way. Although one never sees it in the films, throwing up grappling hooks really needs a steel helmet for safety – as the hook is very liable to bounce off first try, and come down points-first.

Adele Beasley is just unlucky – and rather bad at dodging. She was packed off to the Naval Station first-aid centre pressing a field-dressing to her head, but it seems there is nothing that a few stitches will not fix (memo to myself – the books certainly say that scalp wounds are messy, but they do not really warn HOW messy!)

Having got up the towers, there was the matter of getting down in one piece. Miss Blande demonstrated how to “rappel” without any equipment but the rope – a handy trick for emergencies, though best done with heavy gloves and thick jacket or one’s fur suffers severely.

Prudence proved quite a climbing star, beating even Jasbir shinning up the vertical ropes – an exercise we were always very keen on back home, being jolly good fun, and indeed some folk spent hours at practice. It certainly builds muscle tone very nicely, and proved a very useful exercise when the playing fields were underwater. Ada seems to be quite a competitive second, and certainly scored a few points for their dorm.

After all the excitement, it felt rather odd to be sitting in a classroom with our notebooks open. Our aerodynamics tutor Herr Bussmann is back from the Volta Conference in Europe, and seems to have been very well received. He brought back plenty of monographs, which we were allowed to look at – I managed to look through one by Monsieur Rene LeDuck on his “tuyere thermodynamique” engine data before Madelene X grabbed it. Happily my technical French is good enough to follow the gist of it – one would not be surprised to see Herr Bussmann’s model aircraft soon sporting what looks like oversized drainpipes for engines. Exactly how they will start rolling down the runway is another matter, as the LeDuck engine only starts giving thrust at about two hundred miles an hour.

Our tutor tells us that Spontoon Island Technical High School are planning to build a wind tunnel, not full-sized perhaps but quite enough for model testing. One wonders just what they will be testing in it – having seen their own LeDuck inspired designs flying (briefly) and crashing (spectacularly), some tunnel testing might well improve matters. I always understood wind tunnels to be awfully expensive – the S.I.T.H.S. complain they cannot afford their own aircraft, so I hardly understand how they are managing - unless someone else is paying for it.

A sweltering day indeed – we had a ten minute break, enough for me to trot over to Song Sodas and fill our vacuum flasks with iced soda. A great help to concentration, in our classrooms at this time of year! And a wonderful invention, despite the worries my Great-aunt Edna had when she first received one as a gift (she refused to be in the room with it unless the door or window was wide open, in case the vacuum leaked out and filled the room.)