Swimming Paddling Pool

We have seemingly nice neighbours, yet they do not invite my youngest to play in their paddling pool despite the fact that their child is forever playing with guns and other toys belonging to my youngest. Mean, I call it.

NG was incensed, so when she espied a bargain paddling pool in Leroy Merlin, she called upon the cavalry (me) to set forth on an expedition across town to secure the booty. I tried calling first to see if they had any left, but the girl on the phone refused to pass me through saying there was already a long list of people waiting.

Monday was Pentecost. It was that funny sort of holiday that we are supposed to work to help the aged, but no one does instead preferring to add a minute a day to the rest of the year's work day. Untidy, it all is, but much umbrage is being taken by the unions over working a day and not getting paid. The word 'solidarity' is obviously a nimby word here.

Leroy Merlin was packed. The car park was packed. I've never seen it so full. Eventually I found a sort of space and we set off on our voyage of discovery, trolley in tow doing its own thing. NG tried not to look at such enticing sights as taps, tiles, baths, cupboard space, garden furniture and other delights. She used to do a lot of house renovating, and Leroy Merlin was her Mecca. I would have offered blinkers, had I had any handy...

After walking round the whole shop in pursuit of the pool, we found a chap up a ladder and asked him. He told us, merrily, that they'd sold out. Bugger, we thought, and left immediately looking neither to the right, nor to the left.

Back at the car, we wound our way out, and drove next door to Carrefour. There, not only did we find a pool, but it was cheaper, slightly, and had a special Pentecost 20% off! Ha!

Flushed with success, we took it back to maison NG, and that afternoon, I came with the boys and revolting friend to set it up. There was training video for the serially pool-setting-up-challenged, but it wasn't that difficult. The main problem seemed to be stopping the revolting friend from grinding the garden gravel into the bottom and puncturing the lining before we'd actually set it up. In the end I had to take everyone home because revolting friend was being a bugger, and setting my youngest into bugger mode too. It was too much, so I chucked them in front of the tele and told them to be quiet.

Later, I went back (alone) to see how things were coming along. It was much too cold to paddle, even. I don't know what's happened to global warming this week, but it's definitely doing it elsewhere! It's been freezing, with a charming northerly wind making us rush to re-patriate our winter woollies!

That was Monday. Today was slightly warmer, and the boys had their first real chance to try the pool. It has a diameter of 3 metres and is 70cm deep, so they can play in it safety but get other than their ankles wet. The blue inflated sausage around the top leaks air, naturally, but the pump is permanently attached, so can be put right at any time.

It's not quite what NG has been used to in the past, but it's great fun for the boys who don't need acres of water to enjoy themselves, and I think, quite prefer being able to walk about and splash each other with impunity.

I'll wait for it to warm up a bit before I dip my tootsies in!

Changing Hours

I did not cope well with the time change today. It felt like I got up at 6am and I was thus thick-headed all day. Some might say this was 'situation normal' in which case they'd get a clipped ear.

I took my youngest to school complete with swimming gear. When I asked where to put the bag, I was greeted by gales of laughter. The water classes start after the holidays. Oops. Actually, I'm not sure they are actually going to swim. It seems like a it's going to be a class to get them used to water. As my youngest has been taking swimming classes for the last 18 months, I think I can guarantee that he is well-used to water, in which case, I suppose he'll just be mucking about.

I have to prepare a gouter for the whole class on Thursday. Parents take it in turns to provide for all the children so we are not obliged to find something every day. It's a nifty system, I think, as long as the parent remembers. I did forget on one occasion, and had to dash to the shops to buy fruit, bread and chocolate and deliver it at lunchtime. Last time, I prepared pancakes for all with Nutella or jam in them, and they went down a bomb.

This time, I asked my youngest what he wanted. He told me that normally he doesn't get enough, so, bearing that in mind, I have to provide :

1. biscuits ('Petit Prince') with vanilla centres (not chocolate ones)
2. yoghurts
3. rolls with whatever I wanted inside
4. jus de myrtille

A teatime fit for a king, wouldn't you say? I had been thinking along the lines of cucumber sandwiches, scones, a homemade cake (on the previous Wednesday afternoon after doing the sports/music run) with a pot of Earl Grey and so on. I expect we'll come to a compromise...

I am not just suffering from the time change, but also an excess of gardening, but the garden is starting to look splendid. I planted some geraniums (pink) after work to keep the mosquitoes away (haha) and threw out (into a box) yet another hundred-weight of stones and pebbles. The soil is incredibly stony. They are not, however, being wasted as I am making a stone path out of all the little buggers so they will turn from being a pain in the seedling butt to a useful member of the garden keeping my feet mud-free. NG is quite upset that I have found a use for them, as she is on a mission to fill her garden with stones. Most people want to get rid of them, but she is making a decorative garden with lots of stones imitating the garrigue. This is to avoid the un-ecological task of watering the garden, or regularly weeding it. Lawns do not do well here.

Tired and aching, then, that's me, but also highly amused by my youngest and his mission to eat a sufficient gouter!

Ducking and Diving

I was contemplating my navel again this evening watching my youngest have his swimming lesson. There was a new girl; the only girl in fact, in a class of 5 boys. She was none too happy; I think because she didn't want to swim rather than being in a class of boys.

The instructor, who at the end of last half term had been getting grumpier and more impatient, had returned refreshed, short-haired and patient. He persuaded the reluctant girl into the water (at which point her father decided it was a good moment to beat a hasty retreat) and to hang on to the sponge 'frite'. That was as far as she got before she started wailing.

She wailed up the length of the pool. She wailed back down the length of the pool. The boys were swimming nonchalantly up and down, overtaking her, chatting to each other as they swam, and generally minding their own business.

Eventually she stopped wailing and found that she was enjoying herself. Then she found she was doing pretty well and ended up frite-less, swimming, and even learning how to dive from her knees. Just goes to show really, doesn't it?

Meanwhile, my eldest was suffering 'solfege', the bane of the lives of French children who study a musical instrument. Rare are the teachers who make it a pleasant lesson, and it's often enough to stop the child from carrying on learning their instrument. My eldest is at that point. He hates going to solfege lessons (music theory) and says that next year he's going to stop learning to play the violin so he can stop solfege. Can I get away with not making him go to solfege? Maybe. Afterall, it would be a shame to stop something he enjoys just because something not very important is spoiling his pleasure. He's not going to be a professional musician, so why torture him with unnecessary crap?

Ah the French. They do love their due processes!

Swimming Pool

Every Tuesday I watch my youngest's swimming class which goes on in the pool belonging to the local hotel. I am systematically amazed at how naughty the other boys are and how little their mothers seem to care that their little darlings are right buggers.

I have to stay and watch because it's a waste of time my going home and coming back again, plus the fact that my youngest loves me to sit and watch. Two classes go on at the same time, and it seems to be a feature of swimming lessons here that the better group (non-beginners) get shrieked at from time to time, or regularly depending on how well they are doing.

The other trainer is a young woman who has the lungs of a fishwife and a voice that can pierce plate glass at 100m. My youngest has an older man, but when he has taken the better group, he has yelled at them as much as the woman and can probably be heard on the coast 25km away.

So, up and down the pool they pound, with their coloured frites (long sponge sausages). One child, Yann who must be about 6 does not seem to have worked out in his mind how to kick in the water. It's amazing to watch. He is trying to work his way from one end of the pool to the other using a short sausage. Instead of kicking and holding his head under water pushing the frite along as instructed, he tries to use it as a means of locomotion by bringing it to him and then pushing it out again. No kicking.

I'm waiting for the 'click' to happen because until it does, he's going to continue to drive the poor instructor insane, and hoarse with shouting 'remoue tes pieds!'

After the lesson is finished, at 6.30pm, the boys are collected by a parent, have a shower and go home. Some, in fact, several, parents bring pyjamas to the place so their kids are immediately ready for dinner and bed. I find this very strange, and were I a child, would absolutely hate to be put into my night clothes whilst in a public place. What an insult! I would never dream of doing such an infantile thing to my son. He gets back into his clothes and goes home properly dressed.

Maybe I'm the weird one here, I don't know. I just try to put myself in my youngest's position and accept that putting him in his pjs too early would turn him into a big baby. In my defense, he is the best-behaved child in the lesson, and the one who tries the hardest at swimming (and succeeds!).

Moral: respect your child's dignity.