Ups and Downs

Nobby has instructed me to find some friends here. It could have something to do with the phone bill. I didn’t think that £100 was too unreasonable, until he pointed out that was for one month… hmm, I think I see his point.

Anyway, I am working on it, and the kids are helping. They have been making little friends at school so we Mummies have been thrown together to arrange the play dates. And even the dog is chipping in – she has grown very attached to Oscar, a Labrador–cross and it turns out his owner knows where I live because the previous tenant is a friend of hers. While we were chatting on our last walk she mentioned that there are wild boars in the woods and that they have made a wallow quite near to the car park. We went to have a look and sure enough there it was – a huge muddy hole, filled with sticky, slimy goo… and my dog. Great. You never saw such a mess, and she was grinning all over her face as she came bounding over to try and cover me in it too. Never mind, I said, she’s due a shampoo anyway, I’ll just get the hose out when we get home. However, when I got home there was a piercing squealing coming from the boiler room. It’s the alarm to say that the pressure has plummeted – there was s a burst water main down the road and our water was off all day. Mr Sod has followed me to Hungary!!! Poor Tiggy was confined to the garden until her fur dried and I could brush the mud out and, dammit I couldn’t do any laundry all day either. Shame.

I might have known there would be some shenanigans to round off the roller coaster week. Monday dawned with Pickle absolutely full of the joys of spring. He was bursting with Positive Mental Attitude all the way to school as he told us he needed to get all his French homework done straight away and couldn’t wait for Jerome to come back for another lesson. He was totally in love with the world and announced which of his classmates he plans to marry. However by Friday the homework wasn’t done and Pickle didn’t even want to get dressed let alone go to school. Oh how quickly it all changes. Now he knows how Mummy felt on the Monday school run, still trying to peel back her eyelids and keep the car going in a straight line after an hour of running round getting the school bags and the PE bags and the swimming bags and the coats and the wellies and the shoes ready and into the car along with the kids and the husband and the dog.

But I have to say, we did find Little Boy Paradise the previous Sunday which may have spawned the good humour – the Hungarian Railway Museum. You can keep Didcot, even if it does have Thomas the tank engine. This place has a huge collection of steam engines from little Percy types that once chuffed around the good yards to enormous Russian monsters with red stars on the front and wheels taller than a man. There is an engine shed with 34 doors surrounding a working turntable; you can have a go at driving a modern train on the simulator, or creep along the track in a hand cranked contraption. There are several model railways indoors for the real anoraks and a mini-ride-on one for the children. Even Poppet had a great time climbing up into the steam engines and wondering how they were supposed to see where they were going when the windows are only the size of a dinner plate and covered in soot.

In fact Poppet was on great form on Monday too – she learned to swim! They’ve been taking lessons twice a week with their new school. Pickle was terribly proud – at first. He bounded over yelling ‘did you see her?! Did you see her?!’ then promptly burst into tears sobbing ‘I want to swim too, but I can’t!’ You just can’t win, huh.

So the rest of the week was a similar minefield of minge. I finally made it back to the furniture shop lugging the extra bedstead we somehow ended up with to customer service to ask for a refund. Not one of the four people in the little office spoke a word of English (fair enough, you know, I am the stranger here; I am not expecting everyone to be bilingual, before anyone points that out). My phrase book had the basics covered with ‘ I would like to return this’ and ‘I would like a refund’ which I read out as best I could while they all looked on cringing as I murdered their mother tongue. Sadly it was missing the translation for ‘Sorry you can’t return that bit without the mattress because it’s part of a set’ so I had to phone a friend to bail me out.

Then as I am lugging the thing back to the car the school calls and puts Poppet on the line. ‘Mummy I have a tummy ache and my throat hurts, can you come and get me?’ Knowing that she is rarely ill (she lets Pickle have all the colds and just breaks the odd limb here and there) I abandoned the rest of my shopping plan – Tescos was right next door, it was quite a wrench – I dashed off to school where she was lying down in the medical room with a glass of water and a tissue looking very sorry for herself. So I brought her home, made a bed up on the couch, stuck Mulan in the DVD player and prepared to play nurse for the next few days. Then this little voice pipes up with ‘Mummy, I’m hungry.’ And the little monkey proceeded to eat 4 rounds of toast and 3 chocolate cookies and declared herself all better.

Have I just been taken for a mug?

Things perked up this last weekend though with a free trip to the zoo with Nobbys company. It felt great waltzing past all the queues to the hospitality desk for our VIP wristbands and competition forms – we had to visit 10 tables in various locations round the zoo and complete an activity to get a stamp on the form. The first couple were nice and easy - naming shells, touching snake skins, and drawing elephants - but the children came over all shy when asked to ‘walk like a polar bear’ in the middle of the path so Mummy had to make an a*se of herself instead while people wandered past wondering why on earth eight people were lumbering round in a circle with their hands on their knees. I had my revenge though when we came to the ‘holding a cockroach’ table. No way. Luckily Pickle would rather let a nasty creepy crawly scuttle up his arm than feel a fool in front of total strangers so we were OK.

So my goal this week is to cut out the phone calls and get out and meet some people, and I am already making progress with the latter: having recently held my hand up to possibly helping out with an upcoming ‘International Day’ event at the school and I just got an email to say I am now on the organising committee and the first meeting is tomorrow morning. Oh god, what have I done? Here’s hoping this is a good thing and not the road to being stuck with some power hungry, bossy mega-mummies who will try and turn it into some major gala event so they have something new to put on their CVs. I’ll keep you posted.

Small People

The great thing about living with children is you never know what they are going to do or say next. Each day is a whole new realm of possibilities from loudly pointing out the flaws on total strangers e.g. Pickle: (looking at a hapless acne-ridden teenager in the lift at the shopping centre) ‘Look Mummy, that lady’s covered in chicken pox!’ – to unabashedly blurting out random thoughts e.g. Pickle: (on a crowded tram) ‘You know, I think I fart so much because I eat so much ketchup…’
Thankfully the language barrier here may hide a multitude of faux pas in public, although you never really know.

And then there are the indiscriminate acts of stupidity designed to get Mummy a little bit greyer.

Like sliding down a glass roof.

Yes, believe it; last weekend while Nobby was out watching a football match I let my little ones outside for a final play before bed time and smiled to myself while I washed up as I heard them laughing and giggling. I went out to call them inside to find them crawling up the sloping glass roof which covers next doors empty swimming pool and sliding down it. On scarves, to make them go faster. How I didn’t faint I have no idea. I decided not to yell at them, I had them talk through the possible consequences instead - What happens when you knock glass too hard? What happens when broken glass touches your skin? What happens when you fall 6 metres onto the tiled floor of an empty swimming pool? How does Mummy get into a locked house to rescue you? When realisation struck we all had a good cry about that one.

And then a couple of days later Pickle disappeared again. We were having a lovely walk with Tiggy while Poppet had her first Craft class after school. Usual scenario: Mummy turns her back for a second and the boy is gone. Half an hour later I am back at the school getting one of the bi-lingual teachers to write down ‘Have you seen a little boy on his own with a Scooby-Doo hat on?’ in Hungarian because I haven’t found him yet, there are hundreds of people around at after-school clubs but none of them understand a word I am saying. It comes out afterwards that he had found his way back to the school when he realised he’d lost me but when he saw the security guard he thought he was going to get in trouble for being on his own and ran off again!! We were eventually tearfully reunited after he heard me calling for him. He told me it’s a good job I get so much practice at shouting loudly. Ha! Anyway, that was one way to get introduced to the new headmistress of the school and have her remember me forever more.

See, that time when Poppet was about 10 months old and I came back into the lounge after making a cup of tea to find that the baby was missing was just a warm up. I still had all my blonde intact when I eventually found her up two flights of stairs emerging from under my bed in hot pursuit of the CD player with the cool button that makes the lid pop up. Here we are a couple of years on and I’m almost ready for my blue rinse.
.
When I told my Mum I found a grey hair last week, she was very sympathetic and told me it was totally unfair and I shouldn’t be getting greys before I am forty. Pansy, on the other hand (formally known as Peony, but she requested the change and if you know who I am talking about you’ll agree it suits her better!) laughed out loud and said ‘Good! About time too - I’ve already got about 50!’ Not quite what I wanted to hear of course, and besides I have never noticed a single grey on her head. Of course I always assumed she would be hiding a couple in there given that she has a French mother-in-law and all (!). But if greys are indeed little souvenirs from our darling children for each disaster then I reckon I am doomed to resemble my granny by the time I make it back to Blighty.

Just to add insult to injury the car has been joining in the fun recently. The new one has a sophisticated system whereby when you unlock the car it has to detect this little black box thingy that you keep on the key ring so the car knows it’s you. If it doesn’t detect the box then you get a warning beep then the alarm goes off. And when that happens ‘Skyguard’ know about it and they phone for a password. I have one password for ‘Quick, the car’s been stolen!’ and another one for ‘Sorreeeee, I set the alarm off by mistake.’

Well, it got to the point where the alarm was going off each and every time I tried to unlock the car, even though the black box was right there on the key ring. And I couldn’t turn the deafening alarm off either. I stopped having to actually say the password when Skyguard called, I just held the phone out towards the honking hunk of metal to prove that I still had it in my possession, however much I actually wanted to push it off a cliff at that moment. In the end I was leaving it unlocked with the dog inside, until someone suggested changing the battery in the little black box. How was I supposed to know it runs off a battery? But it does, so we did, and now all is calm once more, although Poppet still keeps her hands clamped over her ears until we have made it a good mile or so down the road.
It’s nice to know I can get my own back and put the willies up the kiddies every now and then.

Flashback

Mummy: How was your first day at your new school?
Pickle: Excellent thanks. Can I go back again tomorrow?

Well, it looks as though the new school is working out so far, except for the lunches from Poppets point of view. She can’t help being a fussy eater, bless her, but I had promised her it would be different from the sloppy veal casseroles she used to get in France only to find that there is an awful lot of goulash and ragout going on over here. Oops, should have thought of that. Hey, but at least they give them morning and afternoon snacks too so she’s not pouncing on the fridge as soon as she gets home any more.

They have both made some new friends already, which is great news. Pickle can’t remember anyone’s names of course but the whole class is his friend. Poppet is best pals with Dora and has already conspired with her to sneak makeup in to class so they can play with it in the corner of the playground. I’m not sure it was such a good idea to share those sorts of plans with Mummy who is somewhat expected to enforce the school rules. I am now a spoilsport of course but I fully expect she'll find a way to get past me.

I still haven’t made any friends myself, yet, although I have chatted a little bit with Dora’s Mummy. And I did get another reply to my leaflet drop – another divorced chap at the other end of the road, this one with cats. I also had a long natter with a fellow dog-walker in the forest, also a man though. I am feeling somewhat starved of female company and as a consequence Nobby is going to get one pretty vast phone bill since I was on it for almost 2 hours yesterday.

But perhaps he can claim it on the medical insurance as psychotherapy. In particular yesterday I needed to vent my spleen to a mate after another dog incident in a car park. (Uh-oh, not again! Flashback to school car park and irate French woman.) Tiggy didn’t walk in front of any cars this time. She just did what dogs do and sauntered over to a fellow doggy, a little West Highland White on a lead next its Mummy and two other women, for a sniff and a wag. However, we must have slipped through a worm-hole on the way because all of a sudden I swear we were back in Paris when the owner, who was on the phone, went into a wide-eyed panic and tried to scoop up her precious Westie on seeing my scruffy mongrel approaching. But she didn’t want to miss her phone call or let go of her designer handbag so she ended up lifting it off the ground by its collar and lead with her spare hand and dangling it out of reach. Thankfully one of her friends grew a brain and caught hold of it before she throttled it, although she needed to hold it at arms length so it wouldn’t mark her lovely T-shirt. Whereupon the other one turned on me and said,
‘You know, what you’re doing is illegal; your dog needs to be on a leash.’

They were Americans! They were the first female English-speakers and potential expat buddies I had encountered in days! And they turned out to be clones of the total barm pots I thought I had left behind in Paris!

I tried to make light of things with:
‘Oh, she’s quite harmless, she just wants to say hello and play,’ whilst inside I was thinking, ‘I don’t bl**dy believe this, no-one else in this entire park has their dog on a lead. I bet she never said a word to the 3 male joggers and their boxer dogs.’
To which I got (again),
‘It’s illegal to have your dog off the leash.’
I was stunned. It was that afternoon at the bank in St Germain en Laye all over again, learning the hard way that in France the only way they know to handle objections is to repeat the rules over and over until the silly objector goes away. And I quote:
‘Can I see someone to explain this letter I have just received?’
‘Non, madame, you ‘ave to contact your own branch.’
‘But this is the same bank.’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch.’
‘Well, my branch is in the middle of Paris so can’t someone here help me instead?’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch. You could phone zem.’
‘My French is not good on the phone; can’t someone here help me make the call?’
‘You ‘ave to contact your own branch.’

Ah, how I missed all that since moving to this friendly, easy going country where you get congratulations if you attempt to speak the local language rather than the full-body shrug and ‘comment?’ I was used to. I really should thank those three lovely Americans for the trip down memory lane, if they hadn't made me feel about as welcome as a maggot in a Big Mac.

In the end, in good British fashion I gritted my teeth and smiled and said,
‘Gosh, I’m soooo sorry, I’m new here, just moved in last month, and I don’t know all the rules yet. Lovely to meet you. Bye.’ At which my dog obediently jumped into the car and I drove off, planning to leave them feeling ashamed at their lack of sympathy for the new girl on the block and mourning the squandered opportunity to make a new expat friend.

However my wheel-spin out of the car park was sadly spoiled by the sodding car alarm going off for the 100th time and immobilising the car in the middle of the road with the horn blaring and the lights flashing. I could hear them tutting and puffing in a familiar Paris-esque manner behind me while I wrestled to turn the damn thing off.
Bugger.

Weeeeee!

I wonder how many people can say they’ve spent the morning walking round the Budapest Aquarium with a bottle of wee in their handbag? Well, from today you can count me as one. I also wonder who builds an attraction full of fish tanks, ponds, waterfalls and fountains and doesn’t provide at least one toilet? Clearly someone with impressive bladder control, like my Poppet who can hold on all day long if needs be. But when Pickle’s gotta go, he’s gotta go. Since we were only halfway round the exhibits and I didn’t want to miss out on the chance to tickle a ray fish in the ’petting pool’ I had to resort to desperate measures and find a quiet corner where we could convert a hastily emptied Evian bottle into a potty. Of course in order to empty the bottle I had to drink the water as I didn’t think I should chuck it in with the terrapins. So whilst Pickle was nice and comfortable watching the simulated rain forest downpour in the alligator enclosure once the crisis was averted, I was distinctly distracted trying to avoid one of my own. Ah, the joys.

Anyway, isn’t it great? here I am back on line! It’s been a long time and I am now broadcasting from a different house in a different country. Yes, 300 boxes, one 2-hour flight and one medical crisis later and we are all settled in to Budapest in Hungary. We still don’t have broadband and sadly Nobby is now out of range for BBC1 (Match Of The Day) but hey, we have had blue skies and hot sunshine almost every day for the past month! I must say the transition has been surprisingly easier than moving to France, even though the local language is totally indecipherable. We are managing with sign language and a Berlitz phrase book at the moment until we start lessons but the locals are very friendly and are quite happy to have a go at helping us.

Apart from the relocation agents of course, they have been mysteriously absent since we got the keys to the house. Clearly estate agents are the same the world over. Luckily the landlord is a great chap and has taken care of most questions we have. The agents did pop up again to help us open a bank account, and they kindly directed us to the English speaking hospital when Poppet fell down the basement steps and broke her arm about 3 hours after getting into the house but that's about all. Ah yes, what is that child like? I had been far more concerned that Pickle was going to fall out of the willow tree he had taken up residence in since falling in love with it in the new garden, but she sure showed me where I should have been looking. Thankfully this was a simple fracture, and the left arm too, so she is already out of plaster but I do hope this isn't going to become an annual summer holiday event. It's not even a whole year since the 'how to break your leg on a bouncy castle' incident.

I am pleased to report that the dog has also recovered from her, ahem, ’condition’. About a week before we packed up the old house and in the middle of all the stress of having the phone line cut off too early, the agent giving me a list of things to put right in the house for the inventory and trying to keep the children busy enough not to wreck all my pre-packing tidying, I started finding little puddles on the floor around the house. Considering my son’s love of experimenting and inventing I can be forgiven for assuming at first that it was one of his projects and chastising him accordingly. Until I noticed that Tiggy was looking a bit damp round the derriere whenever the puddles appeared.. oh yeah, just what a needed, an incontinent dog. So off to the vet we went hoping it was just an infection. He did extensive tests, which included sampling her wee – I can tell you, sorting Pickle out in a corner of the Aquarium was nothing compared to trailing my dog down the road with a metal tray and trying to thrust it under her when she started to tiddle – but there was no obvious cause. So all I got was a course of antibiotics, just in case, and a regular appointment with my mop and bucket. Oh, and the humiliation of telling the Dog Transporters who were taking her for a week during the move that their new charge was now going to be wetting the bed every night and leaving presents for them all round their facility. But, you know, within a few days of arriving at the new house all the puddles stopped and she’s been right as rain. So the only conclusion we can come to is that out of all the homeless mutts in that kennels where I found her, I picked the extra sensitive telepathic one who sensed that something was up in the house and reacted as only she knew how. Oh well, all is forgiven now and our new neighbourhood is crammed full of dogs so she is well at home. The Twilight Barking in Paris is just a squeak compared to the racket around here when someone dares to walk down the street - you can actually track peoples’ progress down the lanes with the trail of barking that follows them.

But at least someone’s been making friends. We humans haven’t met many other expats yet as school is out and most people have been away for the summer. Being a little bit anal and sad I decided to do a leaflet drop in the neighbourhood to try and rustle up some company. Poppet thought it was an excellent idea and quickly took over organising the little cards we would drop in the mailboxes and ushering Pickle and me out on evening walks to deliver them. We’ve had two responses so far, I am pleased to report. So at least I have somewhere to go for a cup of sugar if we ever need one. We spent yesterday evening with a lovely chap at the other end of our street. He was very complimentary about my children, who were on their very best behaviour having been suitably primed to give a good impression before we set off. He offered them some ice cream as a welcome, and a glass of coca cola each then told them they could explore the house while he and I chatted over a glass of wine. Hmm. I can hear you fellow mummies muttering 'uh-oh...' I knew it was time to go when the sugar rush hit them and Pickle started bouncing on the sofa singing 'Ebenezer Good' at the top of his voice and Poppet decided his dogs might want to come in the house and finish off her leftover ice cream. Eek! I am hoping we will be welcome there again, but maybe I should find a babysitter first.

Well hopefully I will be a more regular poster once school starts tomorrow. I will only be making 2 school runs a day from now on because they stay for lunch, hurray! But I guess that means I have to find something meaningful to do with myself all day, gulp. How did that one sneak up on me so quickly? One minute you're shovelling food and wiping a*se all day long, in between providing taxi services to playdates and picking up all the toys, and the next minute they're both in full time school five days a week and you're wondering why the house is so quiet. Oh dear. I think I need a lie down. Excuse me a bit.

It’s the Twilight Barking outside. Have they all been reading 101 Dalmatians? Are there lost puppies to find? Why, then, are all the dogs up and down the road all barking their collective heads off? All except mine, though. Yes, Tiggy is laid out under the hedge as usual, with one ear up and one ear down, listening with disdain to all the plebby dogs and their demented woofing as if she’s miles above it all. Well, I suppose she may have been born in France but she’s in an English family now, the old stiff upper lip wot, wot, ‘barking at the moon is so common you know’. Huh, are we ever in denial. She knows as well as I do that as soon as some spotty student strolls past hoping for a quiet walk home from the station after a hard day slogging over a hot text-book she’s going to jump up and bark like a one-headed Cerberus, scaring the cheese out of him. I’ve had to put up signs warning people that the innocent looking hedge they are sauntering past is about to come alive like the gates of hell. I’ve even heard screaming out there before now. And lately she’s taken to trotting in the house afterwards with her tongue hanging out and her tail wagging as if to say ‘I got another one, Mum!!’ Bless.

Well, I am supposed to be doing the house insurance form at the moment but I really can’t be bothered. I mean, I have actually placed a value on all our worldly goods, but I did it my own way and now I have to re-format it all to fit the nightmare form I have been sent. Apparently I have until next Tuesday night to complete it so I can afford to procrastinate a bit longer. Besides, why should everyone else have all the fun? Nobby has been in Budapest since Sunday and I know he’s currently watching Angelina Jolie ‘avin’ it large in her new film and the kids are still messing about instead of sleeping, as usual. I dunno where they get the energy from frankly. Our day would have floored an elephant – swimming, dog walking, playdate and a trip to the farm – and I’m pretty wobbly myself… but not them. Pickle just found the energy to jump up and down on an up-turned washing basket. Until it broke. That’s when I found the energy to take the stairs two at a time to find out what the almighty noise was. Poor little lamb dissolved into tears at that point. I tried to comfort him by saying Mummy wasn’t too upset about the broken basket because that means she can go shopping to get a new one. At which he let out an extra loud sob wailing ‘but I HATE shopping!’ Oh well, I tried.

Speaking of shopping, I have had another run-in with the infamous French Customer Service. Our lovely Krups coffee machine - a must for the discerning espresso drinker - has been playing up lately. I dug out the receipt, convinced that we only bought it last autumn or something only to find it was last March and the damned thing is out of warranty. Blast. (May I refer you back to a prior rant about all things electrical? I love it when I’m right. ) So I took it back to Darty (French version of Dixons) in case they had any words of wisdom to help me get it fixed before we fly the coop next week. Oh, this one was a pearl.

‘Vare are you moving to, Madame?’

‘Hungary.’

‘Well, I ‘ope ze water is better in ‘ungary zen. It’s the water ‘ere in France; it eez so ‘ard eet wrecks all zees machines de café.’

‘Yes, but I have always used filtered water in the machine.’

‘Ees no matter. Filter, bottled, eets all ze same.’

They really should change the name of that Service Desk to just The Desk. He told me I could send it away for an estimate, which would take two weeks and cost 22 euros. Then if I decided I’d still like to get it repaired it would take another two weeks. The part about me leaving France in less than a fortnight was clearly lost on him. As Rose would say, it was about as much help as t*ts on a nun.

So, I think I will get back to the sofa and another episode of Friends, ‘up yours’ to the insurance form. I have sorted out the spare room, tidied the playroom and extracted my son from the wreckage of an ex- laundry basket this evening while the kids play and Nobby ogles Jolie’s jubblies; I think I deserve another episode. Unlike Rose, Nobby has never understood my obsession with Friends (a bit like me and his football, by the way) but now I have the entire set he had said he may try a few episodes, see if he can get into it. ‘After all, they’re only 22 minutes a go.’ Ever the numbers man, that’s my Nobby. Personally I think he’s missing the point and I can’t wait till the football season restarts so I can tell him ‘after all, it’s only a game.’

Dare me?!!

Quick! I have time for a mini-Blog while the kids are having a lie-in instead of lumming round my ankles. There’s a price, of course. They are lying in because they didn’t settle down until gone 11 o’clock last night. I did my best to stop them mucking about but once my bottom is on the sofa having done my story-reading duties at 8pm the last thing I want to do is keep trudging up the stairs to shout at them. So I only have myself to blame when they do the same thing again tonight having not surfaced until 10 in the morning. Don’t you just love the holidays.

But we are moving house a week on Friday! How did it come round so quick? And as things stand the whole process is in a mess. I had such plans to get every room sorted and all the junk chucked out before the packers came and until school broke up I was making excellent progress. However, since the end of term even scheduling a trip to the toilet has become a major feat with all the lumming going on plus there’s the lorry-load of books and drawings and other ‘cheese’ they brought home which has been dumped on my desk in a menacing looking mountain. Then I took a peek at the medical claim forms I have managed to accumulate since the E101 ran out in February. Bad idea. And it’s not just in the house that things are bad. Just when you think you’ve got all your ducks in a row having negotiated the removers down from a 7 day move to a more respectable 3, you find out that no-one has told the relocation agent at the Hungary end which date you are arriving and so the rental contract they’ve spent 6 weeks getting signed doesn’t start until five days afterwards. So today I either have to get the contract changed or rebook the removers, dog transporters, flights and hotels and persuade the tenants who want to follow us into this house they need to wait. ARRRRGH!! This move is driving me to drink.

There is some good news though - I found my driving license!! I have only been looking for it since our last holiday which is, oh, about 8 weeks. It turned up in my black winter handbag of course. I am on a summery brown one at the moment. Der.

Plus my parents have been over again for another life saving visit. While they were here playing Lego and Barbies with the brats I managed to motor through a couple of rooms, including the garage which was very satisfying. And with their help Pickle had a lovely birthday party for 14 of his little friends. Well, the kids had a lovely time but since it was raining yet again on the big day the rest of us found it pretty hard work keeping 14 boys out of mischief inside the house. I can tell you, it was ‘wine o’clock’ a lot earlier than usual that night.

I had my own little ‘leaving do’ party this past Saturday night. I managed to get through the whole of it without blubbing, despite a lot of Tequila and some heartfelt speeches and gifts from my closest buddies. I won’t list them all or I’ll start welling up but I must mention that Rose gave me the entire box-set of Friends DVDs. Now that nearly got me going then and there since she knows I have wanted it for years. I can’t say how much I am going to miss the wonderful friends I have made here. It’s so hard to leave them all behind despite the exciting adventure we have ahead of us. I just hope Nobby is prepared for the phone bills!

Anyway, the beasts are stirring upstairs and there are fighter planes zooming over the house so I think I need to take cover. (Its July 14^th, the planes are just on their way to the Champs Elysee for the parade but it’s still pretty unnerving!) And I have a house move to get back on track, what am I doing still sitting here?! Wish me luck.

What’s it all about?!!!

There are several things bothering me today. Not least of which is why-oh-why it takes me weeks at a time to get back to the keyboard for some therapeutic ranting on my Blog. But I am also pondering the following; perhaps you can help (answers on a postcard etc).

Firstly, why do I get Spam websites opening up every 2 minutes when I log on to my computer, whether I block pop-ups or cookies or not – and what is a cookie anyway? Why can’t they call these things after stuff that won’t make me hungry, like pebbles, or mothballs or something? And who out there in the ether looks at my email and Blog activities and decides that I need the latest information on internet dating and last minute flights to Dubai anyway?

And why can’t I get through my to-do list AT ALL no matter how I plan to fit it all in? I have started several tasks towards getting us ready to move house but they are now lying all over the house half finished so that I still can’t tick them off the list yet. Maybe it’s because every session at the computer takes twice as long as I close down all these extra windows offering me cheap porn and cheaper car insurance? I did say ‘sod the immigration questionnaire’ but that was only supposed to be for the night and I still haven’t done it.

Here’s another thing: why have the children chosen to adopt two scarab beetles from the forest as pets? Are they trying to motivate me into getting the rabbit they keep banging on about by sitting on the sofa letting nasty little creepy crawlies climb up their arms whilst cooing fondly to them and giving them names like Fred and George??? I’m sorry, they may be small and harmless (apart from the plethora of revolting germs they must be sporting having been rolling around in all the crap on our local forest floor) but frankly the only beetles you’ll ever find me anywhere near have four wheels and a distinctive VW engine noise. Why won’t they just accept my simple yet compelling excuse that we already have a dog and dogs eat rabbits?

Also, why don’t my childhood toys and games seem as much fun this time round? Poppet just got into ‘French skipping’, which was a favourite of all the girls in my school back when I was seven. We would raid our mums sewing boxes for every morsel of elastic we could get our hands on, tie them together into the biggest possible loop then take votes on who would be the suckers standing with it wrapped round the backs of their legs while the others all jumped in an out of it. These days of course ToysRUs have cottoned on to this line of business and the new generation will not stoop to using ordinary knicker-elastic like we did. It has to be at least five metres long, softly coated to protect those bare ankles, rainbow coloured and costing a ridiculous amount from the toy shop. Luckily Poppet got hers for her birthday and I was initially really up for giving it another go several decades on to see if I could still manage ‘kneesies’ and ‘thighsies’. Somehow it’s just not as appealing as it used to be though, but the weirdest thing is the déjà vu of having a dominant playmate who only really wants me to act as one end of the loop while they perfect their own moves to impress their friends in the playground. That is exactly what used to happen to me with one little ‘friend’ in particular who would invite me round for the whole afternoon just so I could stand opposite a wheelie bin and watch her skip. Fortunately here in France we have 2 wheelie bins so I am off the hook and Poppet can do her thing without me.

One kid ‘thing’ I am enjoying is ‘the sleepover’. Not when they come here of course – Poppet had a friend to stay on Sunday night and I swear I lost half a kilo running up and down the stairs to yell at them to shut up and go to sleep. But tonight it’s her turn to stay with her friend so I only had one kiddie to put to bed, and it was the easy one because Pickle will at least admit when he’s tired and take himself off without too much trouble.

Meanwhile, Nobby and I now have a shared obsession, and no, I haven’t suddenly ‘got’ football and he hasn’t suddenly fallen in love with ‘Friends’. Someone asked me what he would like as a leaving present from his French team before he moves on to Hungary and I suggested a Nintendo DS with the Brain Training programme. Inspired! But now I can’t wrestle it away from him to do my daily training and my brain was down to 28 years old yesterday, the selfish old thing. Pity my body is feeling slightly older, as proven by the monstrous bruises I am modelling since my final jujitsu session on Saturday which consisted of a demonstration in the village square in front of my fellow residents. I was fighting a girl young enough to be my daughter and considerably shorter than me but she nevertheless managed to splat me so hard I am still sore now. With it being the end of the year there was a little BBQ afterwards which was very pleasant. All I’ll say is we put away an impressive amount of wine, these hard-core black-belts got as mushy as drunken teenagers when it was time for me to leave and bid them adieu for the final time, and it was a good job there were no police around on the drive home.

My final rant for the day is why, why why is Dr Who about to regenerate??!! I could not believe the end of that last episode where a Darlek got him with a lucky shot and they’re going to replace David Tenant with another bloke. It just isn’t right; he’s the best Dr Who since Tom Baker (and now I am really giving away my age…) I am dreading Saturday night to see who they replace him with. If I don’t like him I may have to renounce my love affair with science fiction and go back to my knitting. Sob.