Why won’t the ironing do itself?

The ironing mountain is getting out of control; very soon I will need crampons and a rope to reach the top and those jeans at the bottom will have been crushed into a diamond. And I am in denial now, so poor Nobby is having to do his own shirt each morning before he can get dressed. The children just go to school creased. Poppet likes to wear the same outfit all week until it crawls off her so she doesn’t really care and Pickle will wear anything at all as long as he doesn’t have to fetch it or put his arms and legs in it himself. How I miss my ‘Ironing Man’ and his little white van from when we lived in England.

At least it isn’t in the spare room any more so my brother and his girlfriend had a place to sleep when they came to stay this weekend. Not that we were here much, we took full advantage of the extra adults and dragged the children out into Paris. We visited Jardin d’Acclimatation – a fabulous ‘park’ with playgrounds, animals and a load of fairground rides in the Bois de Boulogne. Uncle got to drive Pickle round in a Go-Kart while Auntie took Poppet on the roller coaster. Then on to La Defense where we went up to the roof of the Grand Arche for a view over Paris and a very interesting art exhibition. Then we had a quick pizza before staying up late for the fireworks at a local town fayre.

Since they left on Monday I have been trying to get the phone fixed which has involved several calls - in French – to France Telecom and a visit to a FT shop. It is finally back up and running after 10 days and there were 26 calls on the answering service from poor souls wondering where on earth we were!

Note to self: always unplug the Livebox when there is an electric storm in case the phone gets fried.

And while we’re doing reminders:

Note to self: watch your language in front of the children.

Note to Poppet: the black and white four legged animal they were drawing on Smarteenies was just a cow, not a moody cow...