Plan B

Dear readers, I wouldn't want to give you the false impression, reading this blog, that my life is one long sunny day... or that every Sunday is the opportunity for a great, photo-filled family outing to pretty, photogenic places.
I mean, if that were true, it would be quite depressing for everyone else really, wouldn't it?

No, in the interests of honesty, allow me to tell you about this not-so-fun Sunday.

It was one of those days where nothing really seems to go as planned.

FH really really wanted to take us out to visit a village an hour and a half away from Toulouse. So after the usual hour-long preparation stage (picnics, suncream, just-in-case jumpers plus a mountain of other "stuff"...), we piled into the new car and set off.
As we travelled along the motorway, the sun started to recede into the rear-view mirror, and the clouds formed ahead. I couldn't resist muttering that this state of affairs was exactly what the weather forecast had predicted. This comment put FH in a super mood, as you can imagine.

We ploughed on but pretty soon the sky was not grey but black, the traffic came to an abrupt halt and an ominous panel informed us: SLOW DOWN. STORMS AHEAD.

At this point, we (OK, I) panicked, and insisted we turn back. No way was I ready to affront another storm, two days after getting the cracked windscreen fixed.
A few more snappy comments were exchanged, and we ended up doing a U-turn.
By now it was midday, and BB was hungry and fed up. So as we drove along looking for somewhere "nice" to stop and have our picnic in the drizzle, two of the car's passengers were sulking and one was whining. I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

FH made a stop in the first village we came to, we all piled out and trudged around the deserted streets for 10 minutes like a hapless group of refugees, until it became obvious that this was "the village that time forgot" and there was blatantly nothing to do here.
FH asked me tersely what I wanted to do now, but I was beyond expressing interest in anything at this point. To be honest, when you're 7 months pregnant with an extra 6 kilos pressing on your bladder, the next toilet stop is pretty much all you can think about.
"I don't care, I just want to go to the toilet!" I snapped. FH grimaced. BB scowled.

So how did we salvage this disasterous day?
Well, as chance would have it, we were just two minutes away from Carcassonne airport... so with no other option available, we ended up going to the airport café for omelette and chips.
Yes, we are the sad people who actually go to the airport just to have lunch, even when they have no plane to catch...
BB rallied over a huge plate of chips, and I didn't even care that he hasn't eaten a real vegetable for 6 weeks (chips are basically vegetables, right?).


We had the added bonus of watching a Ryanair flight take off as we ate. Woopie, an aeroplane. Always makes my day, that does.

And then we drove home again.

A 2-hour round trip, plus toll charges, all for the pleasure of a plate of chips at the airport.
Yep, there are days when things don't go according to plan.
And when we got back to Toulouse, the sun was still shining...

One of Life's Simple Pleasures...

... coming home from work early, lounging on the sofa and watching Rafael Nadal grunt his way through the French Open... Forgetting you are pregnant and jumping up in delight when your favourite guy wins a great point.

Summer = the thwack thwack of a tennis ball and the low drone of a commentator's voice.

Fifth Form French Revisited

Sometimes, after a day spent sorting out things like cracked windscreens and dented bonnets and car insurance... I am reminded in a funny way of high school French lessons.

I have the vague sensation that my life is a fifth form French oral exam, where, for example, you have 10 minutes to prepare the following scenario:

"Imagine that your car has been damaged by freak hailstones. Do the following tasks: Call your insurance company and explain the situation. Call a garage and arrange for the car to be repaired. Specify that you have a child and a job and no means of transport. You have ten minutes to plan what to say. You may make notes if necessary."

I suppose the fact I can now accomplish all this without even making prior notes or looking up vocab means that I've come a long way down the path to bilingualism since high school days...

So what's the moral of the story?
Fifth form French exams ARE useful! But maybe the scenarios should be updated a little to reflect the real-life challenges of modern (wo)man...

Poor new car suffers from a rare form of automobile chickenpox...


BB, unfazed, tests out an alternative form of transport

Freak of Nature

There are some things in life that one must accept with a wry smile and a stiff upper lip... or else become very bitter.

Like, for example, say you spent three months looking for a new car, found one and bought it for quite a lot of money, owned it proudly for all of 12 days...
... and then, one Monday evening, thanks to a freak hail storm, the aforementioned new car got pounded relentlessly for two minutes with hailstones the size of hand grenades.
Leaving dozens of dents in the roof and bonnet.

Well, if this ever happens to you, give me a call.
I'll be able to empathise.

Bridge Days

Today is a "bridge day" (in French, un "pont"). Bridge days honour an age-old French tradition: the understanding that, if a public holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, 95% of the population will take the Monday or the Friday off as well, thereby making the bridge to the weekend...
Some (a lot) of sneaky people also consider that a public holiday that helpfully falls on a Wednesday = double bridge, and may well take the whole week off.

Some of us - including me - like to work on bridge days.
I like the therapeutic calm of the office, the soft purr of the photocopier, the faint buzzing of the overhead lights...
Today, our entire staff consists of three people: me, my boss and a hapless intern (who presumably doesn't have the choice). And the sound of my fingers click-clicking on the keyboard resonates around the empty room...

FH is at home baby-minding. The creche is making the bridge, of course.
I haven't told any lies, exactly, but I perhaps led him ever so slightly to believe that I had to go into work today. The truth is that bridge days at work are so much more relaxing than looking after a toddler... so sometimes a mother has to do what a mother has to do...

The Day I Became French

Yesterday I was invited to an official ceremony at the "Préfecture" to mark my new French citizenship. I was not alone. There were no less than 130 "new" French citizens present, plus their friends and family. Knowing what an important day it was for me, FH had taken the day off to accompany his new French wife...

We were all welcomed into the beautiful, imposing salons of the Préfecture, and a short film was shown about what it means to be French. The balance between patriotism and simple national pride was just about right, and the onus was definitely on "this is a two-way contract, and France is honoured that you have chosen to become its citizens." It was all very uplifting, apart from the rather sobering reminder that it is now our duty to defend France in the event of war...
(plus, pregnant women were given priority for the too few seats, so that was nice).

After that, we were all upstanding for the national anthem, the Marseillaise. Again, it was patriotic, but not uncomfortably so...

Finally, each new citizen was called up one by one, and presented with a "welcome pack", a bise (of course) and a few polite words from the "sous-Préfet" (a bit like a British mayor, I suppose, but I'm not very well up on the intricacies of the French administrative system...).

It was all quite moving: I watched the other candidates closely and it was obvious that all of them found the ceremony, and the act of becoming French, meaningful. I don't know what their individual stories are, but I'd be curious to find out: a wide range of ages and origins were represented (although as a European with no real "need" to become French, I was definitely in the minority).
France gives itself a lot of bad press about its attitude to immigrants, and the media likes to chastise us as an immigrant hostile country.
But it's interesting to bear in mind that there are 11 of these ceremonies every year in Toulouse alone... and at the national level, about 100,000 "immigrants" obtain French citizenship every year. This figure is far superior to the highly publicised "expulsions" (the horrible scenes of illegal immigrants being forced onto planes and sent away) that we are often subjected to...


I'm not saying that everything is perfect, of course, and I know that racism and injustice exist here as they do in every country (see last week's anecdote, for example).
But sometimes it's good to remember that thousands of people do make it through the system, are welcomed into the fold and made to feel part of the national community.
And most of them are not white-skinned, or rich, or well-connected.

Yesterday, I was one of them and I left with a sincere feeling of gratitude.

Growing Up?

Bye bye youth...


Hello adulthood...



This may sound strange coming from somebody who already has 1.5 kids, a husband, a job and a mortgage... but exchanging our little green Twingo for a bigger, blander, more serious car really does feel scarily like "growing up"...

I'm not sure I like the feeling.

There is a poem by Jenny Joseph called "Warning" (if you haven't read it, I recommend it), and it starts:
When I am an old woman, I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn't go and doesn't suit me...

Well, just for the record, I hope that "when I am an old woman, I shall drive a brightly coloured Twingo..."

Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité...

Mmm, it's amazing how often you're confronted with "life" when you use public transport. Far more so than when you're comfortably encased in your own vehicle.
Sometimes these confrontations are amusing, and occasionally they are less so...

Today I found myself waiting for the No. 16 bus on a narrow bench, sandwiched between two other ladies: an older woman who was clearly of Arab origin, and a younger black woman.
The Arab woman soon struck up a conversation about the weather and the unreliability of the bus service (those two, worldwide classics). But a minute or so into our chat, she peered round me to take a look at the black woman on the other side of the bench, then leaned towards me and commented in a hushed voice "So many foreigners around...".
It's hard to describe her tone appropriately, but let's just say the comment was made in such a way that I felt decidedly uncomfortable. And more than a little surprised.

After a brief pause, I replied "I'm foreign too, you know". It was the first thing that sprung to mind, and it is true, after all.
"Ah yes, but it's not the same. You know what I mean, don't you?" the Arab lady smiled, winking at me as though we were sharing some private understanding.
At a loss for words, and very uncomfortable at this point, I nodded and studied my shoes. I did know what she meant, and it wasn't very nice.

Luckily, my bus arrived soon after that, and it wasn't the same as hers, so I got away lightly with a polite "Bon après-midi".
I was quite shaken though.
As I sat on the bus on the way home, I thought how sadly ironic that little exchange was: there we were, three "French" woman (we probably all had French nationality), all of "foreign" origin, and one of us was making a cutting judgement on the other two based entirely on our skin colour. In what way do I have a greater "right" to live here than the black woman?
None whatsoever, of course.
And if I happen to have white skin and light-coloured eyes, this is the pure product of genetics, history and chance.

Racism remains - and I hope it always will - totally incomprehensible to me.

A Weekend in the Country

... ... or "101 ways to keep a little boy entertained at the weekend"
Strategy no. 2/ Bring in reinforcements (8 adults & 7 kids, all bilingual).

Lost and fed up somewhere near Poitiers... Man (not shown) panics while Woman takes practical action.

Reading time by the log fire

(Half) group portrait

Tourist contemplates life

DIY man finds a new project

The weekend draws to a close...

And suddenly we're back on the road again.

Our Man in Washington

I just finished reading Barack Obama's autobiography, Dreams From My Father.
It was published in 1995, so presumably well before he had any realistic aspirations of becoming President...
What I mean is: I don't think it should be read as a propaganda pamphlet, and that's certainly not the way it comes across.

Well, I was quite a fan before I read his book... but now I think I have progressed to the stage of full-blown groupie.
Maybe one day I will be forced to eat my words (manger mes mots?!), but this is one politician who seems to be as genuine as they get.
This is a man who walked away from a blooming corporate career in his early twenties to go and work with under-privileged families in Chicago, then decided to study law so that he could defend the down-trodden more effectively.
It would take a major dose of cynicism for such a man to become corrupted, now that he has finally made it to the top job.

As I say, maybe I will regret my near-hero worship at some point in the future, but I'm hoping not.

For goodness sake, last night I even dreamt about him! I dreamt that we were a couple... or was it that Barack was trying to desperately to persuade me to go out with him? Yes, I think that was it.
Sad, isn't it? And to think that I am a respectable 31 year old wife and mother...
Bet I'm not the only one, though.

Pink Lady

Warning: if you have even the slightest capacity for empathy with a fellow human being, you will be very embarrassed by the end of this story...

On Sunday afternoon, I took BB to the local park for an hour. It was my token outing of the 3-day weekend, since I've been trying to rest up and FH has (thankfully) been elected "prime child-carer" for the duration.

With hindsight... I would have been much better advised to stay home the whole weekend...

While BB burned off some calories, I got chatting to an English couple I'd never met before. It's not exactly rare to meet fellow Brits in Toulouse, but it's rare enough that when you do, you tend to get drawn to each other, smile a friendly smile and, if the signs are good, maybe strike up a conversation.
This was a lovely couple: you know, exquisitely polite and smiley and well-spoken in that uniquely English fashion. The husband was a charming, slightly awkward Hugh Grant-type with paler skin and sandy hair.

Anyway, whilst we were chatting, BB made a beeline for the big kids' slide, and was half-way up it before I realised what was going on. I rushed over and clamboured up the steps after him (that slide is scarily high: far too high for a kiddies park, in my view), but he was too quick for me, and we were soon right at the top.
Only when BB saw quite how far down it was, he got cold feet, froze and decided he didn't want to slide down after all. But we were stuck. A queue of other kids had already formed behind us, and the only way down was... down.
"It's alright!" cheered Hugh Grant from the bottom of the slide, "I'll catch him!"
So after a few more seconds hesitation, with BB still clinging white-knuckled to the bar, I had no option but to bite my lip, take a deep breath and give him a gentle push (er.. shove) down.
Off he sped.

But we haven't got to the embarrassing part yet.

BB safely down... that left me.
None of the five kids lined up impatiently on the steps was going to budge and let me down that way. So it seemed I would have no choice but to follow BB down the slide.
"It's alright!" cheered Hugh Grant (again) from the bottom of the slide. "I'm here!"

Oh Lord.
So there I was, over 6 months pregnant, wearing a short dress with no tights for the FIRST TIME this year (why?? why??), forced to slide unprettily down into the waiting arms of a complete stranger.
And, of course, just to make the shame complete, my dress rode up as I set off, revealing two milky white, sun-deprived thighs and - horror of horrors - a pair of bright pink knickers.
(let me just clarify something here: this was a genuine case of "everything else is in the wash." I am 6 months pregnant and have all the energy of a lethargic snail, so I was NOT wearing pink knickers for pleasure. But isn't that just Sod's Law? THE day you just happen to be wearing bright pink underwear is the day you find yourself whizzing down a slide with an English gentleman staring up at you, bog-eyed).

For a few cringeworthy seconds, I knew EXACTLY how Bridget Jones must have felt.

So here the tale ends. My cheeks are a deeper shade of crimson than my underwear, all dignity is lost.
The conversation with the English couple just never seemed to flow quite as naturally after that, and I soon made my excuses and claimed that BB was "so tired" we had to leave. Immediately.
(helpfully, BB decided to kick up a big fuss at this point and run away from me back to the slide, as though to underline the audacity of my lie. So an embarrasing tussle ensued, with me cooing weakly "come on, come on... I know you want to go home...").

The question now is: how long before I can reasonably return to the park?
Or would it be better just to start looking for a new park?

Face Lift

In case you're confused, no, you're not imagining it: the blog has had a face lift.
Well, given my current state of lethargy, one of us had to (me or the blog), and it's cheaper and easier for the blog to go under the knife...
Do you like it?
Was it better before?

Play on Words

In the past week, BB has picked up an astonishing FOUR new words... thereby increasing his total vocabulary by almost 100% in one foul sweep.

Unfortunately for me, all of these words are French, but I suppose it's inevitable that his French will progress faster than his English.

And, to relieve you of the unbearable suspense, here are the four lucky words:
Chat (cat); Chien (dog); Chaussettes (socks); Chaussures (shoes).
I am particulary impressed with the last one, as personally I still find it quite hard to pronounce, even after nine years in France...

However, do you see a pattern emerging?

Is it a mere coincidence that all of the new words start with "Ch".... or is BB methodically working his way through the alphabet??

If that's the case... well, my goodness, what an intelligent, organised little boy he is! Has he secretly been reading the dictionary at night after lights out? Or is he just starting with the hard stuff, to make doubly sure he doesn't have a lisp??
(try to pronounce all four words with a lisp - you'll see what I mean).

N.B. We know it's not just a fluke because he's using all of the new words in the right context (i.e. whilst pointing to the corresponding object). There's only been one unfortunate incident, in which he pointed at our neighbour and exclaimed "un chat!", but to be fair, the neighbour is quite rotund and teddy-bear-like...

Mama Sings the Blues

Hum. I have recently realised that it is far easier to write a blog when you are feeling happy, witty and carefree.
It's less easy when you're exhausted, irritable and slightly fed-up...

But instead of shirking away from the blogosphere in shame, I have decided to write about feeling blue as well... because it's part of life, and I'm guessing everyone feels that way sometimes.

I hate negativity, and I know how amazingly lucky I am, in the wider scheme of humanity and all that. Really I do.
But at the moment, I am so tired that if I could snuggle up in a time bubble for a few months, undisturbed, I'm pretty sure I would jump at the occasion.
I love my BB to bits, of COURSE I do... but you know, if he could just say "mummy, why don't you take a break, you look exhausted! I'll just entertain myself today!", well... well, that would make me very, very happy. At 20 months, however, this scenario is a little unlikely.

To cheer myself up, I have decided to make a random list of all the things I would love to be doing right now, if time, money and reality were no object...

1/ Ride my bike at top speed along a sunny river bank... Then stopping at a country gîte for a night (er... a month).

2/ Spend two weeks being pampered at a luxury spa resort.

3/ Drink chilled rosé wine on a beach at sunset.

4/ Spend a long weekend in Cancun (minus the swine flu) with Anita, Mario and Ingrid, getting to know Anita's baby daughter whilst sipping cold lemonade by the pool (having journeyed to Mexico via tele-transportation of course: no aeroplanes in this scenario).

5/ Go back-packing around Italy, just me, FH, an unlimited amount of time and money.


Ah, just thinking about all my options has made me feel a little better.
And the good thing is that, no matter what, tomorrow is always a new day.