Babyhood

I’m currently very keen on the idea of the children having a pet. Naturally they ask frequently if we can get a cat or a dog. P wants neither, whereas I’m desperate to have a budgie again (or small Australian parakeet for those of you who don’t speak proper English!)

I have always loved birds, and the tame budgies I have had in the past were such fun to play with, and great companions. Also, they don’t smell! But P isn’t keen because of the incredible volume they can reach when they squawk. So I’m currently dropping hints about once a week, and I’m sure I’ll wear him down eventually…

A recent, more dramatic incident was when Pauline stole a packet of chewing gum from the supermarket last week. I had refused to buy it for her, and she must have slipped it in her pocket without me seeing. Later that day her little friend Jeanne came to play and the pair of them chewed gum and exuded a pervasive strawberry aroma all over the house. I naturally assumed Jeanne had given her the gum and said nothing.

That night Jeanne’s mother rang me to say that Pauline had boasted to Jeanne of having stolen the gum and that she planned to steal some more next time, to share with all her friends! It was bedtime, unfortunately. P. & I went upstairs with serious faces and said to Pauline “We just found out something very bad”. Her little face turned white and she said “I didn’t steal any chewing gum”!!

Her father gave her quite a lecture, but when he started talking about the police and prison, I made faces at him behind Pauline's back for him to stop, as I didn’t want her having nightmares about it (and waking us all up!)

We asked her if she had any money to pay for it and she opened her purse to reveal a few coins. I’ll take her back to the supermarket next Wednesday and she will have to pay and apologise. I seem to remember having committed a similar crime when I was about the same age, is that right Mum? I never did it again, that’s for sure.

P recently surprised me by offering to take us all to Disneyland Paris on a Sunday afternoon. Apart from the astronomical prices, poor food and long queues, it was a lot of fun. Especially when Kevin kept running off on his own into the madding crowd… what happened to my shy little boy who used to hang on to my leg, rather than let me out of his sight?

Both children were so excited to see familiar cartoon characters in real life. Kevin went with his Papa on one scary ride, while Pauline and I took a sedate train trip around the perimeter of the whole park. Somehow though, it just wasn’t as magical as the Disneyland in California my parents took me to when I was thirteen. I must be getting old...

The highlight for Pauline was Las Vegas-style song and dance live show on a huge stage, that took place in front of us, just as we sat down for dinner. She stood on her chair to see better and danced along with all the pretty ladies in their very short dresses. I was admiring their magnificent calf muscles, while I suspect P was checking out a different part of their anatomy! Kevin was more interested in his food than the dancing!

After our wonderful Christmas in New Zealand, it was rather hard coming back to France. January and February were cold, busy, and the daily grind (of rush to school-work-dinner-jog-shower-sleep and start again) seemed so monotonous that I was sadly lacking in inspiration for writing letters. However, I do remember a few events that spiced up the dreary winter:

I took the children to see the French film Astérix & Cleopatra and it was brilliantly funny! There were plenty of jokes for children and adults, and it brought back many special memories for me. In fact, whenever French people ask me why I wanted to learn French and live in their country, I explain that my Dad bought the book of Astérix & Cleopatra when I was just nine or ten years old, but it was in French and of course I could understand very little of it. However, I loved ‘reading’ the pictures and trying to guess the meaning of the words. It so intrigued me that I couldn’t wait to get to secondary school and start studying French for real.

In the film the costumes and sets were so true to the book that I knew off by heart, I felt like I was in the story too! The movie script took some liberties with the original, and included some very funny contemporary jokes about trade unions and mobile phones. Kevin and Pauline just loved the physical gags and the talking siamese cat!

For my 21st – oops, okay make that 37th - birthday, friends invited me to a really top class new restaurant (the chef used to cook for La Tour d’Argent in Paris, which is extremely famous).

Just listen to this menu: quails’ legs with salad and fig chutney for the entrée; followed by roast monkfish with a selection of wild mushrooms (they were also roasted and the outsides were crisp, with the juicy insides retaining an incredibly concentrated flavour). I have to stop here and take a deep breath.

Okay, brace yourselves: dessert was caramelised apple tart with the locally-made barley sugar ice cream. The pastry of the tart was the thinnest I have ever seen, and the whole thing was heavenly.

To top off all that excitement, the three glasses of champagne I had ordered to treat my friends turned out to be on the house - what a nice gesture. It was warm enough for us to have our coffee outside in the garden, where we could watch the swans gliding elegantly past on the Loing (the same swans who hiss at me when I take the children to throw bread to the ducks).

Kevin had a scan and they diagnosed too much fluid in his hip socket as a result of the inflammation. We have just driven home and have to take him into hospital at Fontainebleau tomorrow morning where they will put him into traction. Oh God...

It's now Friday and it's been the most miserable and lonely holiday I think we've ever had. Poor Kevin is naturally very frustrated. We did let him walk around a bit yesterday because he seemed so much better, but by afternoon he was limping and crying again, so now he's firmly back in the wheelchair. If we take him to the beach, he can only stand in the shallow waves or sit in the sand digging, and sadly watching all the other children splashing and having great fun.

Luckily P. had enrolled Pauline in a kind of "Yachting for babies" class with the local yacht club. A young woman called Coralie puts life-jackets on Pauline and four other small children and takes them out on her boat for two hours every morning! She absolutely loves it, as they catch fish and crabs and do a nature study class on the water. I felt quite nervous about the idea of my wee girl going off in a small sailboat like that, but the weather conditions have been very calm, and she's enjoying it so much. I mustn't be a wet blanket! Also, the instructor is properly trained in boat safety, of course.

Otherwise, I spend most of the day trying to entertain Kevin in non-physical ways. There is an internet club here, with six computers, so he has spent an hour every morning playing very basic educational games. There is no television or video, unfortunately, but there is a library, so we read a lot. I've just about exhausted the stock of books and games I had packed for wet days. He is really good at Snap, dominoes and Memory now! I feel like screaming with boredom though and wish we were at home where at least we would have more toys and all our friends to entertain us. Since we have had the wheelchair I have been able to take him out on long walks, but it's very hilly here! Still, the village and scenery are really beautiful, with dark pink granite boulders, grey stone houses and beautiful hydrangeas and hollyhocks, menhirs and dolmens, just like in Asterix & Obelix, everywhere. I've noticed many plants and flowers similar to New Zealand coastal varieties, but I can't think of their names. We are right on the port, so there are plenty of boats to look at, and even a small roundabout/carousel thingy for Kevin to ride on. It is costing me a fortune, more than the wheelchair, but at least he gets more fun out of it.

The mishaps and accidents continue...

- Kevin's glasses broke and of course I didn't have a copy of his prescription in our luggage (will remember next year though!). So after only five or six attempts to phone our ophthalmologue at home, I finally got through to his secretary who promised to post it to us here, but that was four days ago and we're still waiting...

- P. has developed a revolting, tubercular cough, which should arouse my compassion, but only drives me mad ...

- Imagine my shock when idly flicking through the English newspapers the other day, to learn of the Concorde crash near Paris. It is a strange coincidence that every time my parents come to Europe, something frightening happens just days before or after their arrival (for example the IRA bomb scare in our London hotel 1978, actual bomb explosion in Paris metro 1996, bomb threat in London last week)...

- In our hotel rooms the windows are extremely wide and when they are open we are constantly bashing our heads on the sharp pointy frames...

- I have lost the lovely watch I bought myself in New Zealand last year as a treat for having worn cheap and nasty watches for so long (I'm really upset about this)...

- There's a Mickey Mouse children's club on the beach with trampolines, swings, games and supervised activities etc, where we were thinking of leaving the children for an hour or two next week, if Kevin's leg gets better in time. But just yesterday I happened to be walking past and saw an ambulance arrive to treat a little girl who was lying on the ground with eyes closed and covered with a survival blanket... I don't know what happened to her, hope she's all right now...

I just want to go home! Have been dreaming of my new job, miss the office and my brand new clients terribly!

Now for some more cheerful news: there are no mosquitoes here! And tomorrow P. has promised to take us to an Ornithological centre, and perhaps an aquarium, so that should put some pep in Kevin's day.. Cross your fingers for us!

Our holiday got off to a rather strange start: we had only just driven past Fontainebleau when we witnessed a young man crashing his motorbike on the N6, just a couple of cars in front of us. We saw a lot of smoke and his big BMW bike in bits on the side of the road. Amazingly, he jumped up and was talking and gesticulating energetically to the three other drivers who had already stopped to help him. P. stopped the car and I was fumbling for the mobile phone to call an ambulance, when we realised someone else was already doing the same, so we rather guiltily drove on again, as the road was getting blocked with stopped cars. The children sensed the drama of the situation, but I'm not sure just how much they saw. I felt quite ill and trembly for an hour or so and kept wondering just how hurt the young man was. He looked unhurt, but must have been in shock and possibly didn't feel any pain from the burns that P. said he must have suffered from being dragged along the ground. Anyway, we knew he was being looked after, but it put a real damper on our holiday mood. How I wish people would be more careful!

We covered the 600 km distance from home to Brittany in very good time. The weather was fine and the children were so good in the car. I shouldn't say such sexist things, but here goes anyway: before setting off, I told the children to pack a little back pack each with plenty of toys to keep them occupied in the car. Kevin took one back pack with four robust, utilitarian toys in it, and Pauline took three back packs, one hand bag and a shoe box absolutely crammed full of little teeny-tiny, itty-bitty fragile toys, jewellery, dolls' accessories, trinkets and stale bread for feeding starving pigeons!

... Where was I? Oh yes, they were so well-behaved that we only stopped once, at lunchtime for a picnic in a little village called Vignoc. We discovered a lovely park with picnic tables in the shade and a trout pond. The children ran round and round the pond, throwing bread to the fish and trying the catch the dainty dragonflies with dazzling turquoise bodies that hovered everywhere. I can't think of the name of those insects that skate along the surface of the water, but Kevin and Pauline thought they were little crabs!

We arrived at the 'village de vacances' holiday centre in the afternoon and noticed that Kevin was limping slightly as he got out of the car. He said he had a sore knee, but we didn't think much of it, as we were preoccupied with checking in and getting the bags and boxes up to our room. Then we wanted to walk around the village and take the children on the beach for a paddle before dinner time. Kevin's limp got progressively worse and by evening he was crying with the pain and couldn't walk at all. We had to carry him to the dining room and back. I gave him paracetamol and had to get up a couple of times in the night to comfort him.

First thing on the Monday morning I called the local doctor who said she could come over by lunchtime. After she'd seen him she wrote a prescription and said we must go immediately to the hospital in Lannion, 10 kilometres away, for x-rays. She suspected it might be an 'apophyte', which is a condition of the hip joint, not unusual in children of his age, where there is either a fracture or fissuring of the bone, which just mysteriously occurs, without necessarily being the result of a fall or a violent blow. We were quite stunned, naturally, especially when she warned us the treatment would be a minimum of three weeks in traction.

We spent the rest of the day in the emergency room at the hospital, the doctors and nurses were so lovely and very kind to Kevin. He wasn't actually in any pain when he stayed still, so he managed to joke and laugh with them. They put anaesthetizing patches on each of his inner elbows and left them for an hour before taking a blood test. The nurses were so skilled, that not only did Kevin not feel the needle going in, but he didn't even see what was happening! Before that though, he was wheeled off for x-rays. I had a big lump in my throat and felt like crying when I saw him go off on the stretcher, all covered in a white sheet.

We were there for many long, boring hours, trying to keep both kiddies amused with the few hospital toys on offer. Luckily I had thought to shove water, biscuits and story books in my bag before leaving. Finally the doctor came back to tell us all was well, the x-rays revealed no fractures and the blood tests ruled out any infection, so in fact he diagnosed an inflammation of the cartilage in Kevin's hip socket. The only treatment is painkillers and rest i.e. no walking, swimming, jumping, running and normal holiday activities... We felt unbelievably gloomy. By Tuesday morning our backs were hurting from carrying him everywhere, so I had the brainwave of phoning a pharmacy to enquire about hiring a wheelchair. It costs surprisingly little (107 francs for one week and hopefully we won't need it for longer than that).

So, at last I actually put my bum on the chair and write again! Can you guess what this month's lateness excuse is? No, I haven't been entertaining guests; the school fair and baking frenzy was over quite a while ago; no illness or act of God has prevented me from sharing the most scintillating details of my star-studded life with you. Quite simply, it has been extremely hot in the last few weeks, and as my computer is in a tiny room just under the roof, every time I came upstairs to check my e-mails I could only bear stay for five minutes until the sweat started pouring off me. Then had to run back down and put my head in a bucket of cold water! However the temperature has dropped to a pleasant 24°C today, which is much more bearable.

Now for some really big news... I'm going back to work in ten days time! I'm half-delighted and half-terrified. I've been offered the position of marketing manager (well, trainee, at first!) in a very small research company. There are only 4 others in the company and they publish a monthly report in French and English for the international cereal and grain industry. I was shocked they were willing to take on someone with absolutely no marketing experience, but they really need a native English speaker and my German will be useful too. Also, they will send me to Paris for a training course in marketing. I will have to spend a lot of time researching potential clients in the US, UK, and all over Europe and contacting them by phone. This will be a real challenge and a complete change of career for me, so I'm really excited about it.

The children don't seem to realise yet what it will mean for them, but hopefully it won't disrupt their little lives too much, as I will be working just four eight-hour days every week, and will be at home with them on Wednesdays when there is no school. I am going to work just two weeks in July, to learn about the company, while the office will be fairly quiet. P. and his parents will take turns to look after the children.

Then we leave for our two-week family holiday in Brittany. In August I'll go back to work, Pauline will go to a child-minder for four days a week, and Kevin is enrolled in a holiday sports and activities programme. Also, my father is coming to visit us for two weeks in August, so I'm really in for an exciting summer! I hadn't really intended go back to work until Pauline starts primary school in two years' time, but this was too good an opportunity to refuse. The main attraction of the job, apart from the salary of course, is that the office is very close to our house, so on fine days I will be able to bike or walk there. Also, the hours are very flexible, so I can still take the children to school in the mornings, and their daily routine won't be changing very much at all. At lunchtimes Pauline will go to her childminder's house and Kevin will eat at the school canteen. I have signed up for a three-month trial period, so if it doesn't work out, if the children are unhappy, I can easily quit. But I'm feeling very optimistic... I haven't told P. yet that he will be in charge of all the housework and cooking from now on!!

The children and I had a lovely, relaxing break in the Dordogne last month. They really enjoyed the six-hour train trip. On the way there our carriage was full of lively and noisy teenagers, so my two were able to jump about, talk and laugh, without disturbing anyone. Pauline chatted to lots of people and collected sweets and games for herself and Kevin!

The weather was beautifully hot and sunny for the whole five days, we were so lucky. The highlight of the trip for me were the restaurant meals and shopping trips. For the children it must have been the hours spent in the garden catching tadpoles and newts in the old-fashioned stone laundry tub which has a stream running through it. They also loved picking (and eating!) lettuces, radishes and carrots from the garden. Why won't they eat supermarket carrots at home?!

School ended on an emotional note last Friday. Kevin has completed his three years of nursery school, and was kissed and hugged by his lovely teacher Geneviève. She really brought him out of his shell over the months, and he progressed in writing, drawing and games. It is a joy to see him gaining in confidence. Although he is still very reserved with adults and strangers, he doesn't seem as frightened of them as he used to be.

Pauline is more outgoing and chatty, also very independent. She's playing in another room as I type this, and she just doesn't seem to need my constant presence anymore. She had a little friend to play yesterday and they spent the whole time in the garden as far away from me as possible! Often the children play in the bedroom with the door shut and tell me I'm not allowed in. That's fine by me!

Kevin's birthday fell on a school day, and started with an early morning phone call from Granny and Grandad in New Zealand. I had baked a huge chocolate cake covered in Smarties and some apricot-coconut truffles for him to share with his class. His teacher lit the candles and the children all sang Joyeux Anniversaire AND "'appee beursday to yooooo"!

His best friend Clément came to our house for lunch and the dessert was a fabulous ice cream cake that he chose himself from our local ice cream parlour.

I'm just recovering from three weeks of non-stop visitors. Firstly Lorna from Ireland, my long-lost au pair friend from my Munich days, and her 4 year-old daughter N. We hadn't seen each other in 14 years, so it was a gas catching up on all the gossip. Her daughter played so well with my kids, although they kept speaking to her in French. She retaliated by saying "Macaroni!" and she even spoke some Irish to them! Sadly it rained on Easter Sunday, but that didn't stop them having fun.

Then came Annette from Germany with her two daughters and Polish au pair Anna, who was charming and so laid back... she just took the wee brats out of my way every time I started getting frazzled. I think I'd like her to stay permanently!

By this time Kevin and Pauline were getting a bit fed up with having to share their toys, living space and mother's attention with so many strangers, so it was quite a relief for them when my farming friends from New Zealand arrived with NO CHILDREN in tow.

Life is so hard: I had to show my friends around Paris, Fontainebleau and our village, buy delicious foods and wines, stay up late drinking, laughing and telling my oldest dirty jokes, accompany them to restaurants, EuroDisney, festivals, discos (well, not really, not at my age!), etc.

So it was exciting and exhausting, all a bit unreal. I've washed the sheets and vacuumed the house for the last time and am looking forward to a wee holiday myself.

First there's our school fair next weekend, so I'm doing lots of organising, baking and setting up stands. After that I'll probably be ready to collapse, so I'm taking the children on the train down to the Dordogne for five days. Méemée and Pépé will be down there in their little holiday cottage, so I'll hand over total control of their darling grandchildren for as much as possible. I plan to lie on the grass in the sun with a book and a glass of wine at every possible opportunity. If I can summon up the energy I will eat the odd meal and perhaps cool off in the river if it gets too hot, darlings. Tell me you feel really sorry for me...

What with all the excitement and visitors we've had recently I didn't feel up to organising a proper party for Pauline, and she seemed to enjoy the quiet little celebration en famille just as much. It's the cake and presents that count!

I baked chocolate muffins instead of a big cake.

She huffed and she puffed, and she BLEW those candles out... but they kept lighting up again!

Pauline loved all of her new things: hair band, stickers, glittery bracelets and matching necklace, notebooks, striped socks, sun glasses, folding hairbrush and a blow-up sunshine photo frame (sounds strange, I know, but it looks great!).

Kevin and Pauline are very proud to welcome Madeleine and Bastien to our family!

They are two bouncing baby goldfish, weighing about 3 grammes each! We got them last week at Truffaut, the garden centre which has a big pet shop. The fishbowl sits on our dining table and it's very pleasant to watch them gliding around in the water, definitely a calming influence!

The children race to feed them in the mornings. The only thing I have to watch is that Pauline sometimes wants to put bits of her meals in the water. Otherwise they are very easy pets. We have to clean the bowl and change the water once a week, and we use rain water, not tap water, which might bleach out their orange colour. They have such lovely, delicate fins, almost transparent.

We've had lovely spring weather and I was really keen to get my vegie garden started early this year, so have been doing lots of digging and composting. I've sowed lots of seeds in indoor trays, as it's so much cheaper to start from scratch, rather than buy little plants in a month's time and plant them directly in the garden. Kevin has sowed radishes, peas and carrots in his little plot and indoors I have tomatoes, lettuce, basil and - for the first time - aubergines (which is rather brave of me!) I'm preparing a plot for potatoes too. I spent two whole days digging up the old strawberry plants, trimming their roots and replanting them in a new plot lined with black plastic, which will save me a lot of weeding. I'm going to sow the same seeds every two weeks, so we'll have a continuous supply. It feels really good to be organized this time, instead of the more haphazard and impulsive gardening I did previously. Last year all the sweet corn ripened at once, so this year I want to be able to enjoy it all summer long.

Pauline recently discovered the existence of her shadow (on sunny days, naturally) and the first time she realised what it was, she said "Look, there are two Paulines". Her great game now is to try and jump on Kevin's shadow as we walk anywhere, which of course provokes howls of outrage from the young sir (you would think he really was in pain!) and if P. happens to be with us, he can't resist joining Pauline. I seem to spend a lot of my life rescuing Kevin from his father's teasing, not a job I enjoy. Recently however, Pauline was very angry at her father when he insisted over and over again that she put her slippers on. She howled with rage and shouted "Your name is poo-poo!", which is the worst insult she knows.

The two of them have very long and highly amusing conversations in the back of the car and I love to eavesdrop. When driving back from Provins, Kevin said to Pauline "If you found a poo-poo in a pond, what would you do?" She said she would try and fish it out with a stick! Hope I'm shopping in Paris or travelling to London if that eventuality ever occurs! So you can see what their current obssession is.

We haven't had any more "How do babies get out of their mummies' tummy?" conversations for a long time. Today Kevin put a dress on over his trousers and Pauline told me he was a little girl called Madeleine playing with her. She took K's hand, saying, "Come on Madeleine, let's go shopping" and he was furious, saying his name is Kevin and he's not a little girl. Maybe that will teach him not to cross-dress!

Our visits to Fontainebleau library continue every two weeks and we're consequently doing a lot more reading, as they pick four books each and make me read them every night. They don't like having to take the books back though, they'd like to keep them! There are even a couple of books in the library which we already have at home and they understandably get very excited to see them. But annoyingly, they always want to take them out, and start screaming when I say no!

Last Sunday P. drove us out to Provins for the afternoon, as it was beautifully sunny and almost warm. It has a perfectly preserved medieval fortress. The original town centre is extremely old and most of the houses have a plaque indicating their historic interest. Joan of Arc attended mass in the cathedral there! The primary and intermediate schools are right in the middle of the old quarter - how lovely to be able to go to school surrounded by so much history!

The children were fascinated by the stocks (or pillory?) in the old town square, comprising a narrow, black cage-like structure atop a seemingly bottomless well. There was also a posse of Harley Davidson motorbikes and their leather-clad riders parked in the centre. P. admired them very much and says he would like to get a motorbike licence. I think he's half, or even three-quarters serious!

In the summer Provins will be crawling with tourists, as they hold costume parades and jousting tournaments, eagle and falconry shows, etc. it's very famous. It was a 45 minute drive there, through some very pretty green farmland. On the way we passed a village called Lourpe, which I think sounds like a tremendous burp! Before going home we walked a little way along the ramparts for a spectacular view, but I didn't really see that much, as it was very high up and I was trying to stop those nimble and over-excited little children of mine from jumping over the safety barriers.

Last week Pauline had another attack of impetigo and this time it was on her scalp, just above her forehead. It was really difficult to clean and treat, because her hair was so long. And as we hadn't noticed it early on, the wound was really big, a huge open sore. I had to clean it with Betadine, which needs to be rinsed off the skin with lots of water, so this was very difficult, as you can imagine. She wouldn' t sit still, and of course the water went in her face, etc., so in desperation I chopped her fringe right off at the roots. Of course it didn't look very pretty, plus the ointment made the rest of her hair incredibly greasy, but my priority was to get her healed up. It took over 10 days of twice-daily treatments.

Well P. was absolutely furious when he saw what I'd done. He thought the haircut was a disaster and made her look like the Creature from the Black Lagoon. I was furious that he made such a fuss over it, especially as I was the one doing all the hard work. I told him it would grow back within a few weeks and that a bad haircut on a little girl her age didn't matter (I wouldn't have done it if she'd been much older and obsessed with her appearance). I also told him that if a doctor was treating her he would have shaved the hair around the wound off completely! Anyway, it's all healed now thank goodness, and it took about 5 shampoos before the greasy ointment came out. What a saga!

Yesterday I took Kevin to the château in Fontainebleau for the annual gourmet food fair (funny how this theme crops up in all my letters), which was fabulous. We tasted flammekeuche (savoury tart from Alsace), truffles, salmon, sushi (a team of Japanese chefs were the special guests this year), gingerbread, shortbread, chocolates made by the Patissier de l'Année 1999, many different kinds of ham and cheese, etc etc, and all that for 25 francs! My taste buds were in heaven! We watched real chefs at work and one of them carved an apple into the shape of a bird and gave it to Kevin. Then we picnicked outside and played soccer, after which we were rather cold and tired. So a nice, restful afternoon at the cinema was called for. We saw Toy Story 2 at the cinema instead. It was a really lovely day.

We've had another full and exciting weekend. Friday night was fun with the kids because P. went to Paris after work, so we made a big mess, ate dinner with our fingers and baked gingerbread men and ladies for the school afternoon tea.

I went to a Red Cross jumble sale on Saturday morning and bought myself a skirt and trousers, and gumboots and a woolly hat for Kevin. After lunch I took the kids to town for the spring carnival. They were dressed up as trees in costumes they had made at school, decorated with tinfoil and crepe paper flowers and cardboard butterflies. Kevin's was painted in conventional tree colours, and Pauline's was BRIGHT Barbie-doll pink!

There was music and horse-drawn carts, giggling children in brilliant costumes, and bright flowers, streamers and confetti everywhere. They absolutely loved it. We paraded through village for about an hour, with police escorts fore and aft, and then made our way to the community hall for a free afternoon tea (big bag of cakes and sweets for each child) and children's disco. When the dancing began the dads all slipped outside to watch a soccer match, and we mums danced with our kids to young people's music (of which I was able to identify the Spice Girls only). That is, Kevin ran madly around the hall with his pal Bastien and Pauline held my hands and her bag of goodies and jumped up and down for about 20 minutes without stopping. They were as red as little tomatoes by the time we left! They even managed the long walk home and were absolutely zonked by evening.

I recently showed Georgina Beyer's autobiography (she was the first transsexual ever to be voted Mayor, and to be elected to Parliament) to a French friend Patricia when she was at my house. She was really interested (having spent a year in New Zealand as a nanny) and asked lots of questions, including “Where was she operated?” Her three children and mine were in the room, so I was a little embarrassed and whispered “Well you know…. the genital region”. She burst out laughing, as she had meant “Where did the operation take place?”, i.e. in New Zealand, or overseas!

On Wednesday morning I took Kevin and Pauline to Méemée and Pépé's on the train. They were incredibly quiet and good for the whole two train rides (unlike some of the children who can’t sit still for 15 minutes on the school bus). When Mémée and Pépé met us at the station they were so excited that they ran off to the jeep without kissing me goodbye! Then I caught the train back into Paris to do a bit of shopping, but I didn’t stay long and do my usual movies and lunch thing because I was just too tired and crook, so I came home early afternoon.

Yesterday I didn’t go out at all because it was pouring with rain all day. I made a lovely lunch and dinner though for P. and I – when the children aren’t here I can indulge in spices and exotica and make meals that actually have vegetables mixed in with the meat and starch. For Kevin and Pauline those components have to be neatly arranged in separate piles on the plate! So for lunch we had chicken, leeks, mushrooms and carrots in a gingery, lemony, coconut curry sauce (recipe from 'North & South' magazine) and Madhur Jaffrey’s spiced dry potatoes. It was absolutely DELICIOUS. In the evening I made a tuna, rice, cheese, onion, green bean and egg mixture and flung it in the oven for 20 minutes like a casserole. We had red cabbage salad with that.

Our long-awaited road works have started this week. The Mairie is tar-sealing the footpaths all along our avenue, so Kevin and Pauline enjoyed watched the various ditch-diggers and other heavy machinery at work, with flashing lights and lots of noise. It will be very pleasant to have smooth footpaths to walk on - less wear and tear on the shoes. It will also be easier for the children when they ride their bikes to the square or the cemetery car park. I let them ride on the road because their bike wheels slip and slide on the gravelly footpath, but of course they have to jump off and lift the bikes off the road every time a car comes, which is most annoying.

Pauline made me laugh the other day; she was looking at her baby photos and told me that when Kevin was a baby he was in my tummy, but that she was in her Daddy's tummy!

The school holidays started last Saturday but the first few days were difficult because Kevin had a cold and developed a slight ear infection. We got him onto antibiotics straight away so he was well enough to go to Méemée and Pépé's. On the Saturday night I went to Paris with Danièle and a group of her friends to a jazz club. She has been wanting to take us for a long time, because a friend of hers plays saxophone in a jazz band. It was quite fun, and although jazz has never really been my musical cup of tea, it was very entertaining. It was a very late night though, I was exhausted next day. I slept upstairs though, and left P. to get the children’s breakfast.

I had hoped to send the children to their grandparents so that P. and I could celebrate the New Year in a grown-up way, but Kevin came down with a bad cold and Méemée had bronchitis, so we cancelled that idea.

I knew P. wasn’t keen on going to any parties, and I hadn’t even planned to do a special meal for us. But he surprised me at the last minute by going out to buy smoked salmon for dinner and fancy cakes from our favourite bakery! So I whipped up some “party food” for the children (tiny savouries on a posh silver tray), and put candles on the table. They realised it was an exciting occasion. They stayed up late (till 10 pm) and we all watched the Disney movie ‘Fantasia’ together. So P. and I saw in the New Year very peacefully, listening to music and phoning friends...

Our young neighbour Ophélie knocked on the door with her rampaging friends after midnight, but most people stayed inside, as it was far too cold to go partying in the streets.

I started off the New Year by taking the children to the dentist for the first time ever, and I’m very proud to report NO CAVITIES! The children regard tooth-brushing as a boring chore, but I’m obsessive about it, and rightly so.

Christmas Day at P.’s parents’ house was a very pleasant, relaxing day for me, and Méemée cooked a lovely meal, as usual. For the first time though, the children hardly ate a thing, as they were too busy playing with the new dolls' house and Action Man. The doll who lives in the house is only a babe in nappies, but she owns the most amazing demesne! It’s a two-storey, colonial style mansion with balconies, window boxes and white railings everywhere. The kitchen and bathroom are fully equipped, there’s a mechanical rocking horse, private plane parked on the roof, and even a horse and cow tethered in the garden! Disturbingly though, the children like to put the baby and other dolls behind the balcony railings, saying in a deep, gruff voice “Je suis la police et je te mets en prison!”

We left them to it and ate foie gras, coq au vin, green beans and raspberry roulade in peace and quiet. (In fact, the children were amazingly calm for ages, thanks to the new toys). That night as we drove home a storm struck and it was terrifying driving through the torrential rain and feeling the wind gusts buffet the car. As usual, most of the other drivers didn’t slow down sufficiently on the motorway (have you noticed my favourite gripe often involves French drivers? I’m a careful driver, so why can’t they be the same?), and we passed three nasty accidents in an hour.

But P. got us home safely and we listened to the wind howling for most of the night. The children snored through the whole thing. Next morning when P. went outside and saw so many trees down, roof tiles gone and flying debris, he told me we had to keep all the shutters on the back of the house closed. He was mainly afraid that the huge beech tree in the garden behind us might fall on our house. But it didn’t, and we only lost a few roof tiles, which he fixed the following day, in bright sunshine. The tall trees opposite our house suffered several casualties, about a dozen fell en bloc (some snapped in two and some were completely uprooted), opening up a completely new view to the horizon for us and letting a lot more light into our lounge.

The power was cut off at 8 am, so we breakfasted by candlelight, which was great fun. A week earlier, the children and I had made lamps out of stiff tracing paper and little candles, so they turned out to be even more useful than decorative. The power stayed off all day, but we quite enjoyed it, as we had gas to cook with and plenty of stocks of drinking water in provision for the anticipated Y2K shortages.

We’re eating a lot of canned and frozen food at the moment! However, the power came back on in the evening, so it’s a relief that we didn’t have to manage without it for three whole weeks, like people in some parts of France. That afternoon the weather was beautifully calm and sunny, so we went into the forest to see the damage.

We thought it was pretty dramatic, dozens of trees – the biggest ones - were broken or uprooted, leaving huge craters in the ground. It’s sad, but I found a kind of terrible beauty in it too. An illustration of the force of nature, one might say. You didn’t know I could be so poetic, did you?!

The river Loing down in Moret had flooded in some places, including our favourite tossing-bread-to-the-ducks spot. On the Monday P. saw a car completely crushed by a fallen chimney. Every time we walked anywhere we could see people up on their roofs, fixing tiles and TV aerials.

The children had their school Christmas party at the end of term. Père Noël came and gave them all a present. We Mums made fabulous cakes, as usual. I made a chocolate cake iced with a dark chocolate background and piped Joyeux Noël and snowflakes in white chocolate. I also made a batch of carrot and almond chutney for the café in Fontainebleau, even though I don’t officially work for them any more. My old boss had rung me to ask if I would do it for Christmas, so I didn’t mind. I just don’t want to be doing it regularly anymore. Especially when I found out that they had raised the price of my jams from 20 to 25 francs sometime last year, but not my pay!

The school Christmas break has started, so for two weeks there will be less rushing around and I don’t have the ordeal of getting them ready for the bus four times a day. Kevin is very amenable, and puts on his anorak and shoes with very little fuss. But Pauline is going through a stubborn, horrible phase (yes, another one), where she just doesn’t want to co-operate. They both start the day saying they don’t want to go to school, and yet once we’re on the bus they’re all smiles to their friends. Grrr…

On Saturday afternoon I took Kevin into Fontainebleau to do a bit of shopping, but the main objective was to go to the cinema and see ‘Tarzan’, Kevin’s first Disney movie on the big screen! It was pouring with rain, so I put his glasses (made in NZ last February) in my coat pocket because he wouldn't have been able to see through the glasses and the rain.

Unfortunately, they must have fallen out of my pocket in the car park when I pulled out my wallet to put coins in the parking ticket machine, but I didn't realise.

We got to the cinema, discovered the missing glasses, and so he had to watch the film without them. It didn’t seem to spoil his enjoyment of the film.

We found the mangled frames in the car park later that evening, after they had been run over by dozens of cars. The "unbreakable" lenses were nowhere to be seen, even though I spent half an hour looking! I got a big telling-off from hubby when I got home, because new glasses are very expensive. But Kevin was due to get new ones this year anyway, and the old ones were so scratched and battered that I feel it was a happy accident. His new ones have tortoise-shell patterned frames and look really nice on him. And the lenses are so shiny and scratch-free, I’m sure he can see better now. He really enjoyed telling people that his Mummy broke the glasses, not himself!

One Thursday I spent the morning with Pauline’s class by prior arrangement with her teacher Pierre. He had asked me to come in and bake biscuits with the children for decorating their Christmas tree. I arrived armed with all my baking equipment and the school provided the ingredients. Pauline was very proud to have me in her classroom, but she was rather possessive and wouldn’t let go of my leg for half an hour. She was very cross with the other children when they tried to look into my bags of baking things.

There are 24 three year olds in her class, but luckily I only had to cope with eight or so at a time, while the others got on with a different activity. I managed to let them all have a turn at spooning flour in the bowl, beating eggs with a fork and kneading the dough, but my God it was stressful! I was sadly lacking eyes in the back of my head! While I had my attention on Théo, Gaston was pouring flour on the floor, Zoe was fighting with her neighbour, Julie broke an egg on the table, and all of them invariably put my measuring spoons and cookie cutters in their mouths. When the dough was mixed we had to let it rest in the fridge for 20 minutes, I was able to sit down and watch my daughter participate in the serious business of her education.

The children all lined up and formed a little train to go down the corridor to the toilet. Afterwards they danced and sang in a big hall, it was delightful. Then some of them went outside to play while I took a group to roll out the dough. The part they liked best was stamping out the shapes with the cookie cutters, of course. It was a big success and the nicest part was having the young student teachers to help tidy up! But it took all morning to make 4 dozen cookies and I had a booming headache at the end of it. Those little children are so noisy and run around non-stop. I will never, ever, be a teacher, even in a future reincarnation

P. took the children to the Christmas party at his work. I was sick with tonsillitis, so didn’t go. It’s the first time I’ve missed it. They had a great time. They were given an enormous afternoon tea and watched a very funny clown show. Pauline and Kevin are now old enough to tell me all about it themselves, and even acted out some of the funny things the clown did. They didn’t stay for Father Christmas this year though, it’s always a long, hot and tiring wait too late in the evening for the little ones. P. sneaked their 'comité d'entreprise' presents home and they will open them on Christmas day with all the others.

I felt well enough in the first week of December to get straight back into the routine and even started my Christmas baking and assembling little baskets of jams, chutneys and biscuits for presents. Sarah, my Australian friend, brought her children Nina and Flynn over for lunch. I made pumpkin soup with bacon bits, mussels in parsley and garlic, green salad, chocolate and orange marmalade cake and ice-cream.

We decorated cookies to hang on the Christmas tree. All the children spread the icing extremely thickly (yuck!), and although they had a lovely choice of coloured sugar, chocolate hail, hundreds and thousands and silver cachous to use, this is what they did: Flynn’s cookies were all blue, Pauline’s all pink, Nina’s all had chocolate hail on and Kevin dumped fistfuls of every colour all mixed on every cookie!!
When Kevin and Pauline hung theirs on our tree, they were all at the same height and on the same branch. At night I arranged them a little more symmetrically and aesthetically. However, they all mysteriously disappeared within a few days, so we had to make some more!

It snowed this morning, what a surprise! It was very cold and raining frozen slush when I took the children to school on the bus, but by the time I got the car out to drive to a friend’s house for tea, proper white snowflakes were falling and it continued all morning. So when I picked up Pauline at lunchtime (Kevin went to the school canteen for lunch today), she was amazed to see crunchy white snow outside. She had a great time in the garden, pushing the toy lawn mower around and looking over her shoulder at the tracks she made. The temperature has risen a bit though, as most of it has melted away now. My friend Kim recently returned from England and bought me the Eddie Izzard video I had asked for, and I’ve been watching it this afternoon. He’s really very funny and totally original.