Day 7 Covid19 Lunch

I'm going to lose track of the days, I just know it. Unless I do something organised like count them off on a calendar. Or I could even scratch bars in groups of 5 on the wall... May not go down well with the rental agency when they bring round prospective buyers after-this-is-all-over though, whenever that may be. If ever.

Anyway, I told the boys it would be a good idea to share the cooking. My youngest immediately offered to do a barbecue. My eldest muttered something like 'yeh if I must' in one of those 'at your own risk and peril' voices.

We have a barbecue but needed everything else, so my youngest who can now drive armed himself with the Gestapo-approved food-buying attestation, hopped gleefully into my car and drove to Intermarché. He came back with everything he needed plus one or two essentials such as iced tea.

I remember last year he and his friends wanted to do a barbecue by the river, so I took them to Intermarché, stocked him up with sausages etc. and drove them as far as I could. They had a great time and became great barbecue experts.

So it was with total confidence that I abandoned lunch into the competent hands of my son.

Barbecue champ at work

Actually, when I say 'abandoned lunch', if we were to eat anything other than sausages, it was up to me to rustle it up, so I kept it simple and did pasta and salad. Then we actually sat round the garden table and ate. You might think this is no big deal but my boys wage an anti-table campaign, extremely successfully, and meals are usually taken together but on the sofa. I wage other battles...

A rare experience

We had a nice lunch, talked and chatted and I said how lovely it was to eat and chat around the table, and was told that, yes it was nice, but I shouldn't expect it to happen too often because it would cease to be a pleasant, extraordinary event, and would become boring and annoying. So that put me in my place.

I am, however, grateful for small mercies and will treasure this rather extraordinary UK date Mothers' Day (it isn't until June in France) thanks to the little bugger of a coronavirus. Every cloud, as they say...

Annual birthday cake disaster

With what has become boring regularity, and I really don't know why I continue to bother, my attempt to make a 15th birthday cake for my youngest turned out a disaster. So bad, it was not good for anything but the bin.

It should have looked something like this:

From the Tesco recipe page

A layered cake with Ovaltine and chocolate sponge and Ovaltine-flavoured icing, and lots of Maltesers. Recipe here.

Well, I don't have the right sort of cake tins, so thought it wouldn't matter if I made a single layered cake and just plastered it all over with icing and Maltesers.

This is how it came out:

An inch thick at the edges, what happened to the raising agents, eh? Buggered off on a weekend break? 

The recipe said to stir the flour into the wet ingredients, so I did. What it needed, in fact, was to be beaten in with a whisk, because all the lumps of flour that I thought would dissipate on cooking, did not, and stayed their comfy clumpy selves, visible to all on the bumpy surface of the cake. Attractive...

White bits are clumps of flour. Guess who didn't sift...

This wouldn't have been so bad if the cake had tasted good. But it didn't. I got my son to taste a bit and he started off by saying it was nice... then... discovered an unpleasant after-taste. At that point I gave up and decided to throw money at the situation.

I went to Gonzalez chocolaterie in Jacou, run by Maître Artisan Patrice Gonzalez ("Rendre le monde plus tendre à chaque bouchée") and indulged my son with one of their super chocolate cakes, the Royal:
Mousse au chocolat noir, croustillant praliné, biscuit Joconde..

Candles are mine, only 12 in a packet, too stingy to buy 2

It was, of course, heavenly, and went down a storm with the four boys. My son  had 3 buddies to spend the afternoon mucking about, then I took them to KFC, and left them with a bucket. They found their own way to the cinema to watch 13 Hours, and I picked them up after midnight outside the cinema, brought them home whereupon they took over the living room with mattresses and bedding and were still there at 11.30am the next day (watching tele and playing XBox) when the mother of one arrived to pick him up. The others stayed to lunch (nems) and continued mucking about for the rest of the afternoon.

My son had a lovely birthday. Lots of trashy food, fresh air and fun. I kept out of the way except for providing vital services (taxi, food), and spent the afternoon trying motorbikes with my DB (Honda, new BMW GS, BMW X), dinner with friends, and having lunch in la Grande Motte on Sunday in the glorious sunshine.

The port, Grande Motte

I was shattered by Sunday night.

The Longest Birthday Party

Birthday parties have got longer. It was my youngest's 14th birthday last week and he decided to invite three friends to his 'party' involving cinema, KFC and a sleepover.

Despite the fact it was Easter weekend, his friends were free to arrive just after lunch on Saturday. They spent the afternoon mucking about, coming in only for the birthday tea. Regular readers of this blog may remember my birthday cakes are never a success. For some reason, something either goes wrong, or they are not liked by picky French taste buds.

This year was no exception. My son wanted a banana and chocolate tart with homemade pastry. Easy peasy. I got out the food processor, made up the pastry, let it rest, rolled it out and baked it blind. So far so good. Disaster struck when I was trying to remove the split peas that I'd used to weigh down the pastry. Some of the little buggers had slipped between the dish and pastry when I was taking them out, so I thought I could remove them by tipping up the dish...

Naturally, the pastry fell out of the dish and onto the work surface, where it continued its bid for freedom by making rapidly for the floor. In bits. I yelled, dear reader. I shrieked, and many an expletive passed my lips. I even threw my oven glove across the kitchen (all of one metre). Then I picked up all the bits and wondered what to do.

Luckily the cleaner had been the day before so the 15 or so second rule was not a problem. I didn't want to throw away a tart's worth of pastry, and after some reflection, decided to arrange all the bits back in the dish, like a big jigsaw. At worst, it would end up as a choccie/banana crunch. I put the pastry dish back in the oven to finish off, and later made the chocolate filling (Nestlé dessert black chocolate + brick of organic cream). I sliced a couple of bananas, put them over the cooled base, poured over the filling and put it in the fridge. And hey presto:

Rescued birthday chocolate/banana tart

You'd never guess that it had been on the floor a few hours earlier and the cause of a total hissy fit, would you? It was delicious too. De.Li.Cious!

We sang Happy Birthday, and it all went, to sounds of approval (a miracle!). Then I dropped them off to see Fast and Furious 7 (I was not included in the invitation...) and picked them up later to enjoy their takeaway KFC. I was delighted to find out that cinema tickets are only €4 for under 14s, so that kept the price down, as did buying popcorn from Carrouf instead of paying an outrageous amount inside the cinema.

The next day I found out they were all staying for lunch and beyond (no one was having a big Easter family lunch obviously), and my youngest suggested a picnic at the Lac Cécélés near St Mathieu de Treviers. I made up jambon beurre sarnies for all except one who had cheese, baked some cookies, and we all set off to the lake. My DB joined me after lunch and we went for a walk up the lake and over to the dinky village of St Croix de Quintillargues.

Lac de Cécélés

The boys had a lovely time mucking about with a free-floating pontoon 'boat' but managed not to get wet. They couldn't get far because the wind kept blowing them back to shore, but they used up a nice lot of energy trying.

Four boys on a 'boat'

We left when they'd had enough, went home for more food, and the last one left at 5.30pm. My youngest was shattered but happy. At last I could give the boys their Lindt choccie bunnies, and cook Easter dinner which was a rolled leg of lamb that I'd brought back from England after Christmas. It was excellent, and much appreciated after such a busy day!

My son spent Easter Monday very quietly.

Yet another birthday cake disaster

My youngest was 12 last week. Happy birthday fiston! He had plans for three lots of celebrations with his friends plus an extra one for the family. When I asked why he said that he has friends who differ in age and type and would be unlikely to get on, so he would prefer to do things with each group separately.

He had planned a packed agenda too. Saturday morning was to be the cinema party with one group, Saturday afternoon would be a couple of rounds at LaserGame, and then on Sunday the last group would troop off for an afternoon of paintball.

He also wanted a birthday present. My credit card was steaming at the very thought of all this despite the fact that kids would be asked for a financial participation instead of a present. In the end I was sick in the run up to his birthday and just managed to get the LaserGame outing organised. It was all rather haphazard, but the kids were dropped off on a rainy Saturday at the tram station together with one other mother who I didn't know would be accompanying us, but was grateful that she did. We hopped on the tram, all 10 kids, and they kept relatively quiet and sensible on the journey to Odysseum mall tram stop.

I hate the place to be honest. It's a large shopping centre with vast cinema complex, ice rink and LaserGame. I was too late with my reservation to have the birthday option where the staff provide disgusting cake and watered down soda, but we'd enjoy a homemade cake and full strength soda once we got back home. For this occasion, I'd just brought water and sweets for that all-essential birthday sugar rush.

The all-boy party was gatecrashed by two others whose parents asked if they could join in as they weren't in a group. I said yes, but if there's ever a next time I'll say no as they were a right pain apparently.

They finished all nice and sweaty and a bit niffy so we went back out into the rain to take the tram back to the cars. Back home, the boys dived into the soda, crepes with Nutella, and the white chocolate birthday cake.

When I say 'white' I mean that the chocolate used was white because the cake itself was a little, um, off-white. I made it that morning having rushed to Carrouf to buy supplies. It was all going swimmingly but I'm crap at making birthday cakes; they always turn out wrong, except last year's which in a desperate effort to make one that little French boys would eat (they don't like my Brit fruit cakes), I made from a packet (and it tasted like it).

My oven has an automatic cake setting and I foolishly trusted the supposedly smart technology to tell me when the cake was perfectly done. Well, either we have different interpretations of 'perfectly done' or the smart technology was off having a weekend break or a nervous breakdown because while I was making the crepes I could also detect a whiff of burning.

The oven beeped to tell me that it had decided that cake was done, and opened the door to discover a burnt disaster which would have been fine as barbecue fodder but didn't exactly hack it as a birthday cake. I stood at the hob making crepes and wondering how to save the cake. I let it cool for a while then decided I should try and turn it out. As one crepe was cooking, I turned the cake upside down and put the tin on the rack as the cake was a wee bit stuck. I went back to the crepe and then once the next one was on the go, I bashed the cake tin hoping to jig it out of its stupor.

Well it worked... partly. The crown of the cake detached itself from the rest and landed on the rack together with a large blob of chocolatey cake goo. Bugger. I hurriedly turned the tin the right way up and popped the 'lid' back on, and got my youngest to scoop up the goo with his fingers. He pronounced it delicious, which was encouraging...

I then got the heavy mob out - a spatula - which I dug down and round the side of the cake and freed it from its tin encasing. The crepes were by this time coming out a little over-cooked as I tried unsuccessfully to multi-task. Forcefully unstuck from the tin, the cake landed on my hand in an effort to protect the dodgy crown and I got it back on the rack without further trouble.

Then I thought I'd better scrape off the black bits because it didn't look appetising, a birthday cake that resembled a lump of coal. In-between crepes (yes I made a huge pile, and they all went...) I scraped and hacked at the black bits and once the crepes were finally done, could really get to it. By the end, the cake looked like toast does when you scrape off the burnt bits...

Icing! I thought. The cake needed icing. I found a recipe that required 30g of white chocolate and a tablespoon of water. This is not a large quantity of either, and they had to be melted in a saucepan and then boiled for 2 minutes. The melting bit went okay, but when it came to boiling, I had to rescue it in extremis as it started to brown pretty quickly. So my white icing became white with brown bits. I added the icing sugar and a bit more water which did nothing to take away from the white with brown bits look, and poured it over the cake. As the crown had a healthy dent from its bid for freedom, most of the icing tried to settle there and had to be forced to cover the rest of the cake. I then discovered I had previously chucked out all the candles in a mad clear-out except for one batch of eight. Oops.

The end result? It would never win Baked Off Britain (or whatever the show is called) or even get past a vague chat about entering the competition, but it did in fact taste divine. It was light and chocolatey and not sickly at all. There was none left at the end of the party, not a crumb.

Object allegedly identified as a birthday cake plus other birthday tea paraphernalia.
PS that is the other mum's hand... I was mopping up spilt Coke...

The thought of going through all that again with the other groups was not a thought I wanted to entertain, so after I'd taken my son on his birthday to get his trottinette re-kitted out at vast expense, then dinner for the family at PandaWok, he agreed that that was probably enough.

Cue big sigh of relief.

Comedie Musicale 2

It's been a good year for primary school shows, for once. A couple of weeks ago we had my youngest's class put on a little show based on the year's work in theatre/dance, French and music. A few weeks before that he was in a series of sketches written to underline the importance of safety at railway stations. It was a regional competition and his class won. Parents were invited to a performance of the winning show.

Last night his school vied favourably with the final of the French X-Factor (between Brit Matthew and sassy Marina - he won) to put on a show where all the classes participated in a coherent storyline. This sort of event usually lasts for hours. There is a theme and each class has to perform, dressed up accordingly. Last year it was the Planets and we saw kids prance around being Venus, Mars, etc. It was tedious and annoying.

I don't know what came over them this year, but instead of being subjected to a long drawn-out series of whimsical nonsense, there was a proper story and no wimpishness. Amazing!

The story started with the kiddies of the maternelle. A king and queen were out riding one day and came across an abandoned baby girl. The king took pity on her and decided to rescue her and take her home. A few years later he died and she was left to the mercy of her cruel step-mother, but was entertained by small creatures and birds who did all the dusting, cleaning and sweeping.

Then we saw the start of the Mowgli story - he was found as a baby by a bear and was brought up by the animals of the jungle. Unfortunately he had to fight the tiger, won, and decided to leave the forest because he knew the tiger would never cease to try and kill him. Three fairies visited the children to tell them they'd be attractive, go on a journey and meet a prince/princess.

At one point the girl was stolen by pirates, rescued by corsairs and attended a ball where there was courtly dancing. Then things moved to the city to a West Side Story theme of dodgy types (my son's class) and hippy types. The two groups ended up fighting to the music of WSS.

Eventually, Mowgli and the princess found each other and fitted their two talismans (two sides of a broken heart) together, and had a party to celebrate their success.

It lasted an hour and a half, was slick and well produced and the kids had been drilled to within an inch of their lives so it was a pleasure to watch. The amphitheatre was packed with parents of all types from nut brown skinny women to paler (working) men, the glamorously dressed and ones in shorts and tops. For once, I didn't feel like I needed a constant supply of rosé to keep me going.

This will be a hard act to follow, and as the head is leaving along with 2 other stalwart members of staff, I'll be interested to see what they produce next year. One thing's for sure though, this will go down as a vintage year for interesting, snappy, short performances. I never thought I'd see that.

Comedie Musicale

I received instructions from my youngest yesterday - be present at the school for 5.45pm on the dot! Yessir!

His class were to perform a little show for parents. I'll just say that again for those who have forgotten my kids go to a French school - my son took part in a musical show as part of his education!

French schools are not renowned for including creativity in the curriculum which is why I'm drawing attention to the fact. Children often learn by rote and their handwriting is strictly controlled, and if they want to express their creativity they're obliged to join an association outside school. Inside it's noses to the grindstone and robot responses, please!

My youngest had kept his activities pretty quiet, along with most other things. It was only fairly recently that he slipped it into the conversation that they were preparing a show as part of the year's work. Three teachers were involved to bring together music, dance and French in a show written by the children (aged 10/11). They suggested the music and came up with the theme of the library to run through the show.

The story was that a couple of boys had to prepare a project on Africa so they went to the library to find some books on the subject. When they found one on a topic such as living conditions, they 'went off to read about it' and the class came out to dance or enact a song on the subject. Another topic was music and the last one was a traditional story about a poor girl with a step mother who had to go and visit a leopard to mend a vase and as she was polite and respectful was rewarded while the step-sister was selfish and rude, and she got punished (she was eaten by a snake).

The whole class was involved in the dance routines, with more or less shuffling... and there was one scene which required playing various traditional instruments by a small group (including my son who had to keep the rhythm). They had to learn songs, music and dialogue, plus the story-teller's story. It was pretty impressive because they did an excellent job.

To be fair, primary schools do make more of an effort to get the kids performing at least for an end of year 'kermesse' (which is usually dire) which has a theme such as planets, the sea, Africa, the environment, etc. with kids performing some sort of bland little routine (after which or during preferably, you need a strong drink). What was different about my son's show is that it was longer than usual - 30mins so they had time to get their teeth into a story, and instead of being dire, it was interesting!

Once they get to collège, they perform nothing more and can be as creative as a rotting toe nail. Mind you, at that age they're probably too cool to go on stage with their school mates so it would be incredibly difficult anyway for teachers to prise them away from their phones and get them to rehearse.

At that age now they prefer making their own movies, filmed on their phones, of them doing silly things and then taking the piss out of each other, but secretly proud of their creative achievements... Actually, I'm dead jealous of the technology they have. I would have loved to be able to do similar when I was that age.

Naturally I forgot to take any pictures or film my youngest's show, but it did mean I could enjoy it as it happened instead of later on a screen...

Nature Raw

How was your blistering weather weekend? I spent Saturday celebrating my youngest's 10th birthday. He said it was the best birthday he'd had for, ooh, at least a year... One of the highlights for my son was being able to sit, legitimately, in the front seat. I now foresee fights between boys as to who gets to sit up front! One there, one back, I suppose.

His birthday treat was the afternoon at Accrobranche, where they swing and climb their way through the treetops and descend via exciting Tyrolean traverses. With 4 pals, they pounded their way around the 5 courses, several times, stopping only for refreshment of pancakes and Fanta, and finally birthday cake and sparklers. I had asked for a financial participation rather than birthday presents (with my son's permission!) which meant that instead of going home with a bunch of stuff he didn't need, which would get broken or lost, and be a waste of money, the boys had a good time and I didn't suffer the consequences.

To complete the day, as if presents, Accrobranche and a friend staying over weren't enough, we went to KFC, bought a bucket, and went to have a picnic on the beach. My dearly beloved joined us for a glass of chilled rosé and a discussion on camping sauvage.

I have pretty strong views on camping sauvage summarised, in one word, as 'discomfort'. Yeah, I'm a wimp... from experience, mind. It's romantic in notion, ghastly in practice especially if you like your showers in shower form and hot, a toilet with flush, and no risk of being woken up (if you've actually managed to fall into an exhausted stupor) in the night by lunatics in Jeeps charging round the countryside where you've pitched your tiny tent, whooping in drunken joy and firing air rifles into the air (yes, that was one of my more terrifying experiences just outside Cassis).

I'm too old for such shenanigans. I'm not keen on the 'refuge' idea either. The last time I was in one of those was in the Pyrenees, reached by walking uphill all day with everything you needed in the way of food and equipment. The place was in the middle of a field next to a mountain stream, had no toilets at all, no shower natch, and limited cooking facilities. It also had a dormitory of bunks made up of wooden planks going all the way round two of the walls on two levels. You had to pitch your sleeping bag in a space on the planks along with everyone else - very cosy! It was packed - we'd even had to reserve our space! All night I listened to a surround-sound rendition of grunts and snores (having forgotten to bring industrial strength ear plugs), couldn't get comfortable on the plank (hipbone + wood = bruise), felt edgy about the bloke on my right, and staggered up next morning desperate to leave. The worst was not having the means to make a decent cuppa to cope with the rest of it.

One tries to be a brave little soldier about not going to the loo, not washing, eating rubbish, being deprived of tea and getting no sleep, but ultimately, why bother?

Obviously I'm not a natural nymph of Nature. Still, at least I tried, eh?!

C'est Incroyable

France 'as got talent, roight

Last night I caught the end of 'La France a un Incroyable Talent' which, in my mind, doesn't exactly trip off the tongue like 'Britain's got Talent' and I think tends to be reduced to 'Incroyable Talent'. Anyway, I suppose it's basically the same programme - a qualifying 2-minute round before 3 judges, semi-final and final.

One of the judges is Sophie Edelstein, artistic director of Pinders circus which means certain acts might not only get through to the next round but are told, "the doors of my circus are open to you". The singer Dave is another judge, and the third one is Gilbert Rozon, creator of the festival 'Juste pour rire' (Just for Laughs).

I'm not a great fan of talent shows, but my boys like watching this and it makes for a cosy family moment watching it together; having a laugh, giving opinions on the acts, and guffawing at the crap. Enhanced, natch, by the fact that there are some very talented people out there.

One of the acts yesterday was Sacha la Grenouille, an amazing 36-yr old contortionist who gave a stunning show that had everyone on their feet. Sophie had already seen him in action and told him the doors to her circus were open. His act was colourful, funny and charming. And we squirmed as he achieved impossible positions.

There was an hilarious impersonator, Jérémy, who gave a slick show where he imitated 20 voices in two minutes. At the end, Gilbert said he was disappointed he hadn't done Frank Sinatra whereupon Jérémy broke into song with New York New York, and had everyone on their feet again. He has a really funny face, is full of humour and seems like a very jolly guy. Brilliant! Off stage, he imitated a camp gay man in the post-show interview which had us in fits.

We don't have any show-worthy incroyable talent in our family, but my youngest is set on becoming the voice of Floppy the Monster. I've been writing flipcharts to go with the book and story-builder this week. As they are aimed at pre-school children who can't read, they are full of images and sound. I've been doing one on maths, counting up to four, and a language one describing Floppy's house and garden. My youngest is doing the voice in French, and counting in English.

I was thinking this morning how I loathe children in adverts with their cute voices saying how much they love ham and yoghurt,and how I refuse to buy anything that's been advertised using a child to manipulate me into wanting it. Advertisers don't understand that we find our own kids cute, not everyone else's, and especially not those in adverts. Or maybe I'm in a curmudgeonly minority...

Which brings me (enfin) to my niggling doubts that I should not be using a child to be the voice of Floppy the Monster in French, but maybe a more mature, professional-sounding native Frog. But then I say to myself that small children might identify with a child's voice more than with an adult voice, and listen to the words more enthusiastically because it would be like playing with the child rather than learning from an adult.

For the moment we'll carry on, trying to overcome the raspberry sound that accompanies every 'ppy' and speaking slowly and clearly: Voici Floppy le Monstre. Il a un grand sourire...

You never know, we may make a voice-over/dubber incroyable talent of him yet! It's about time there were more voices used to dub films. I hear the voice OuiOui (Noddy) in all sorts of films and tele shows, it's most bizarre and distractingly irritating.

Je me présente...

My youngest brought back from school on Friday a newsletter written by the kids in his class. In it, all his classmates introduce themselves and say what they like and don't like to eat, who their friends are and what they want to be when they grow up.

It's a really good initiative. I'm delighted that he has a very motivated and enthusiastic teacher who works closely with the dynamic headmaster to introduce as many interesting activities to the school as possible. In October they'll be going on a 'Classe Rouge' (in Autumn, as opposed to a Classe Verte in Spring) to Rennes le Château to do all sorts of out-door and educational activities in a beautiful environment.

The kids in my youngest's class are a diverse bunch. Most were born locally, but one comes from Alès, another from Aix-en-Provence, and another (who lives in 'une immense maison') from Paris. We learn the intimate details of the birth of one, by caesarian section one month early at five to nine in the morning. Actually, that's also the time my youngest was born, not by caesarian section though. Mine came galloping down the birth canal at such a rate of knots I thought he'd shoot out in my neighbour's car. But I digress...

One child tells us she's right-handed, another that she had a horrible holiday this summer, another that she doesn't have pierced ears (but she doesn't say if this is a source of pride or frustration). One girl tells us she likes Chanel, Dior and all the other labels and wants to be a dress designer when she grows up. Hopefully a successful one so she can indulge her tastes herself...

Other future career hopes include: fireman, airline pilot with Air France, postman, dress designer, interior decorator, vet, doctor, teacher, journalist, salesman, professional rugby player, chef, lawyer (this one wanted to be a diplomat first but having to leave places the whole time is too irritating), director of the SPA (like the RSPCA), professional footballer (or lawyer), and my own dear boy who wants to be a soldier. This has changed from being either an artist or professional footballer.

They like doing all sorts of activities, from theatre to sport (cycling, football, rugby, swimming, handball, tennis, baseball), dancing, art, scouts, catechism, music (violin, piano, guitar), riding and gymnastics. One likes to learn English too. :) None of them say they like playing video or computer games  which I find incredible seeing as the evidence in my house supports the opposite view.

I learn that my son likes sausages, salad and cats, but not cheese (I knew all that...), others like pasta, pizza, vegetables and one dessert amusingly called 'mother-in-law's bottom' (fesses de belle-mère - anyone heard of that? I couldn't find it on Google), but not either of the two colours of boudin, cauliflower, beans, spinach or pears. The girls especially tell us about their favourite singers: Jenifer, Katy Perry and Coeur de pirate, Justice, and Michel Sardou.

It's an interesting exercise, this, for pinpointing a moment in time - likes and dislikes, future hopes, friends. It would be interesting to catch up with them in twenty years' time and find out what they ended up doing.

I shall definitely keep the newsletter as a socio-historical document, and I'm kind of hoping my boy does something less dangerous than go into the military!

Certified Cycling

This is not me

Not only am I an official writer, but I'm also a certified cyclist. Since yesterday, what a day that was!

My youngest brought home yet another scrappy piece of paper which gave some information on the need for parental cyclists to accompany school cycle outings. I was all set to ignore it because it would mean taking precious annual leave to nanny a bunch of kids only one of whom would be mine and I'm not terribly motivated to do that, but my youngest emotionally blackmailed me into it. He explained that if there weren't enough parents they wouldn't be able to go out and that would be a tremendous shame because they'd have to do lessons instead and cycling is so much healthier...

So I agreed (being, at times, a pushover) and spent the first half hour after I got home yesterday changing the inner tube of my front tyre. I have two bicycle pumps which seem to work or not on a whim. I don't know what it is with pumps but they are often as frustrating to use as computers. Many a time I have wanted to hurl one at something hard made of bricks to teach it a lesson.

My temper wasn't the sweetest, then, as I tried to connect it up to the inner tube in situ. My youngest and his friend were busily giving a running commentary on bikes and pumps and other useful tips. I suppose the hope was that one would hit the useful jackpot. Meanwhile I was silently cursing. The damn thing wouldn't connect properly so I was pumping air along the pump tube but it wasn't going into the tyre and came out with an explosive whoosh when I wrangled it off the tip. Eventually, by some freak of chance (must have been because I have no idea what I did different that time) it worked and I pumped the sodding thing up.

I then rootled round in the garage for a helmet because I assumed they would probably be into all that elfansafety lark, as this was an elfansafety training. I found my youngest's which was a tad small but would do, put on my snazzy cycling shorts and sunnies. When I got to the school I realised that I was the only one of the women thus dressed. The French turn up to an elfansafety cycle training in sandals and no helmet. In fact the guy in charge remarked that I was correctly kitted out. I wondered if the others would be allowed to continue. You never know with elfansafety stasi.

We were shown the course: cycling standing 'à la danseuse' to begin with, then sitting down, round the corner, over a couple of planks, between two more, round the corner and going in and out of a number of poles, a figure of eight, a roundabout, pick up a ball and put it in a box, another roundabout one-handed, under a rope and charge to the end to brake suddenly only knocking over one out of two planks on cones.

If we could do all that we'd be certified to take out the kiddies. There was a pretty leisurely attitude to it all with people ambling unhurriedly round the course. We got two trial goes then the real thing. Naturally we all passed, even those who knocked over both planks on cones. I feel that what was actually most important was to have a bike you didn't fall off. The rest was just icing on the cake!

It didn't finish there though! Just when I thought I could go home, we were taken into a classroom and shown a powerpoint presentation on taking kids out on the road. When we go, the police municipal cover us with police cars and flashing lights and woe betide any driver who doesn't give us 1.5 metres room. They are pursued and told off or even fined!

Someone asked if there'd be room for an ice bucket of chilled rosé for the aperitif. I think it was me... The woman next to me said she'd been thinking exactly the same thing.

The guy in charge asked if we were surprised at having to take a training. I replied that nothing to do with schools surprised me any more. There was much laughter at this, not sure why. Schools are a black hole of elfansafety, paperwork, scaremongering, and litigious parents. I try to avoid anything to do with helping out. This might sound bad mummy-ish, but the people involved are just too unbearable. It's always the same (stupid) ones, they have their little clique and there's no way I want to deal with them.

Anyway, the cyclists were a fairly jolly bunch so I'm now ready and certified and hoping they won't go out too often!

Rentrée Moments

Some people are organised. They get everything prepared the day before. Bags are packed, clothes are laid out neatly, even ironed neatly. They wake serenely on time and waft about in a relaxed state of well-being and happy anticipation.

However, I don't know anyone like that. Including myself. Especially myself actually. My youngest went back to school on Thursday. On Wednesday I asked him if he wanted me to take him to school the next day. Affirmative. I didn't think about anything else really because he had no list to prepare, and it's still summer; he's been rampaging about in summer clothes for the last 2 months and the weather wasn't set to change. Except it did. So he needed socks.

Socks. I bought him 10 pairs back in June. That's 20 socks. Disappeared, evaporated, spontaneously combusted, dissolved in the washing machine, blown away on the wind, left behind chez daddy, grandparents, campsites, holiday homes, cars, trains... who knows! We found 1. One sock, not one pair. This was at 8.15am.

I didn't panic, I got annoyed. This is a great way to start the rentrée, getting annoyed with one's darling youngest on his first day back at school when he'll be starting a new class, new teacher with new stuff to get used to. Maybe he'd been feeling apprehensive. Maybe he'd have liked to have a quiet discussion on the finer points of integrating a new classroom.

Maybe, but he didn't get either. He got shouted at instead. How can 19 socks disappear? This has to be one of the worst cases of Disappearing Socks ever. Many people are mystified at socks going into a washing machine in pairs and coming out as singles, as though some massive Entity of Separation splits them asunder and consumes one out of every two. We have a more evil Entity at work which operates outside the washing machine as well as inside it.

The Sock Absorber and Evil Sock Asunderer have obviously been targeting my youngest's footwear. It's the only explanation I can come up with for such astonishing loss.

In the end, we found an old pair of white socks so he was able to go to school with comfy feet. To celebrate our luck, Ulysse puked an entire dish of food just next to his bowl as we were walking out of the door. The sod.

When I came back at lunch time, my cleaning lady who I'm never sure when she'll turn up, was there. She had cleaned up the puke (hurrah!) and she'd answered one of the great questions of the universe - where do all the socks go?

Under the sofa, apparently.

Not all of them, natch. That would be too convenient. But the sofa draws them in, tucks them away, and keeps absolutely quiet about what's it's doing. I'm now wise to its little ways however. Ha! It won't be getting away with that again, I can tell you!

The rest though, it's still a mystery...

Fair Bridges

Ten euros doesn't go very far at the fair today. Two rides, that's all it'll give you. I'm pretty shocked by that, but this is probably because I'm an old stick-in-the-mud bat who can remember when rides cost ten francs. Not just in my lifetime but in my lifetime in France, which is less.

Pont d'Issensac, nr Brissac, Hérault

My youngest nagged me into going to the fair at the village next door, after a day spent at the Pont d'Issensac, a place he'd been constantly telling me he wanted to go for a week. He'd been taken there the previous weekend by his friend's mum and had such a fantastic time he wanted to go again.

It's an impressive 12th century bridge, but it's not the history that so enthralled my youngest. Can you see the rock face on the other side? It's a favourite place for jumping into the river, and that was what my youngest wanted to do again. We had a picnic further down, where the river is shallower and there is a little barrage which concentrates the flow of the river into a narrow passage and some exciting current.

We then walked to the bridge and the rocks where a number of ado boys and younger boys were egging each other on to jump. They were showing a fine display of male courage and competition. My youngest was highly pleased with himself. My eldest had a great time too jumping off the highest bit of the rocks (about 5m). No one jumped off the bridge (which is forbidden) until a group of maghrebin lads appeared who immediately started doing just that. Luckily they did not add to the tally of 4 deaths and 6 serious injuries since 2004.

Back home, I agreed to take my youngest and his little friend to the fair. My eldest was going to meet up with his buddies but he needed money so I made him stay for supper and drive in with us so I could get some cash (hehe). I let them have ten euros each and realised pretty quickly that it would not last long!

Never mind, I insisted we walk up and down to see all the stands and rides before making a choice or they would have spent their money within five minutes. In the end they chose the trampoline with harness, and a shooting stand with crossbows (!).

What surprised me most was that despite living in that village for five years, I saw no one I knew. I used to recognise and talk to loads at the fair, but last night, I saw one person and he came from where I live now. It just shows how the village has grown in the last five years since I moved. New houses have sprung up on several estates, bringing in lots of new families whose kiddies were having fun at the fair last night.

Despite only having ten euros each, the boys were keen to stay and mooch about. We didn't see any of the bull runs, but the bull runners were very much in evidence in their team groups at the extended bar roistering, drinking, and looking modestly satisfied in their bull kit. They were probably partially deaf too, or going that way what with music blaring and people shouting to make themselves heard.

We left my eldest to come home with his friends, and headed off into the calm, my youngest delighted at his perfect day of sport, displays of courage, fun, and skill. And he even came home with a pistol after hitting all his targets.

The Torpornator

Can you think of a worse way to spend a couple of hours than watching other peoples' children participate in torpor-inducing end-of-school/fête de la musique shows? Well I can, but they have to get pretty bad, like waiting on the M4 for a breakdown truck to turn up in a freak heat wave, or sitting around for days wondering whether Eurostar has discovered yet which type of freak snow it is paralysing all traffic in and out of the tunnel. You get the idea...

Yesterday, against my better judgement, I went along to the local community centre to watch the primary kids strut their stuff. I was only interested in watching my youngest, naturally, but he instructed me to get there at 6.30pm and as I had no programme I wasn't sure when he'd be on.

As a result, I was obliged to sit through some pretty excruciating performances of whole classes of kids pretending to be music notes, music notes in a flying saucer in search of harmony, cacophony, trees, forest animals, water, good fish, bad fish and some inexplicably caped poets.

I had brought my book but my skin wasn't thick enough to get it out, and I had brought a cushion because sitting on a wall of raw concrete is not my idea of a comfy seat. It doesn't take years of watching these events to work this out, but I seemed to be alone in finding this practical solution to concrete imprints on the backs of my legs.

A couple of years ago I went with a fellow Brit friend and we took an apero of wine and peanuts to ease the pain of watching. Her toddler son had a lovely time tossing the peanuts about and there were a gratifying number of disapproving yummy mummies who were probably green with envy at our foresight and nerve.

Some seem never to have come out of that mushy baby brain stage that you get right at the beginning when the slightest thing your baby does is like a miracle and proof of genius. Normal adult brain service should be resumed at some point, but I get the feeling this doesn't always happen in some mummies. Some seem locked in the stage of marvelling at other people's small children doing mind-blowingly boring things.

The bad fish children, for example. What does that conjure up for you? Sharks? Killer whales? Blood, gore, nature raw in tooth and jaw? Well, what we got were two strings of children running in rings. Good thing they were introduced as bad fish because you'd never have guessed otherwise. You'd just have thought, why are those kids running around in a string holding hands? An image of bad fish they were not.

The president of one of the parent's associations was much in evidence. She's the one who, until recently, used her husband's professional email address to contact members and parents. Her husband is the one who presides over meetings. He is not a member of the association. It was me who said to my long-suffering friend who haplessly joined this assoc to help that I would never take seriously a group who used the professional email of the husband to make contact. She relayed this info and it was changed.

But I ask you, does one have to spell everything out? Are they so thick that having an assoc email is such a bizarre and outlandish idea? This is what we're up against in this country of Airbus on the one hand, and technological stupidity of your average Frog on the other. You should have heard the STINK they made about having a school blog. Anyone would think it would be a gateway to paedophiles and stalkers. They knew so little about blogs that they didn't even realise they could be private. And this is a middle class affluent area where crappy houses are on sale at 500€K.

I'm sure it's all the fault of Minitel. The whole nation embraced it with enthusiasm and pride, being French, but it locked them into a time warp where the internet has had a hard time breaking ground. It's taken a lot longer here than, for example in the UK where the Minitel-less population jumped on it as a fantastic opportunity to communicate.The French were already doing that, to some extent, and couldn't see the point of this new-fangled piece of foreign technology which was all in English.

I left the show as soon as my son had finished. He'd been kicking a football around in a celebration of doing sport. I was mightily relieved he hadn't been forced to sing the wet and wimpy song about the sea, and waft his arms about to simulate waves. Now that would have been more than this maternal sense of duty could have coped with!

Knee Down

I'm not a regular at the emergency department of the university hospital, but I was there today. It being a Monday, my youngest and I were out in less than two hours. This morning in school, during a sports lesson where they were playing rugby, my little lad found himself beneath three of his buddies who'd jumped on his knee.

I received the inevitable call at work and, as I am not a CEO or anything important, was able to leave without guilt, the sound of wailing, or frantic rescheduling of important meetings, to tend to my dear boy. As it was 11.45am and I reckoned we'd end up in the emergency department, I fed him before going to see the local GP and took a book. A wise move.

The doc was unable to straighten out my boy's leg which he held in a vice-like grip, knee totally bent, so he wrote us a note and sent us to the CHU.

There I saw a real baddie. He was handcuffed to a plain-clothes policeman and was sitting in an office off the interior reception waiting to be treated. He looked mean and mighty pissed off too so I tried very hard not to look at him (too much) so he wouldn't register my face and then come after me later. Well, you never know. I found it very reassuring that he was firmly handcuffed however, and that there were at least two uniformed, armed gendarmes milling about together with various pompiers.

It felt like being on the tele. I said to my youngest that there was a baddie in the next room and he just said, as though I were a bit of an idiot, 'Maman!!'

My son was called and we went to have his leg straightened, with a click... and then it was all okay. They X-rayed it just to make sure but it seems there's nothing amiss. He walked out, limping a tad, and we spent the afternoon watching dvds, including Next, with Nicolas Cage which had me quite entertained although my youngest told me he'd seen it already with his dad. Ah well, at least my afternoon off work wasn't completely without interest...

Brings it all back...

My youngest is 9 today, now a strapping lad with a size 36 shoe.

His entry to the world nearly happened in a neighbour's car. Bet he would have been pleased...

After feeling uncomfortable and taking a bath, I called my neighbour to ask him to take my eldest to school because I felt the time had come... He suggested dropping my son off with his wife while he took me to the clinic. With hindsight, I'm not sure what would have happened if he hadn't taken me.

It was about 8.15am, my (now-ex) husband was at work at the hospital operating, and not reachable. The neighbour arrived, picked us up, dropped my son, and drove towards Montpellier. The clinic was in the centre of town, it was rush-hour, and my contractions were killing me. Caught in traffic, we crawled along and I reckoned we had another half an hour before we reached the clinic.

Then outside the university hospital, at a red light, my waters broke, my contractions were fierce, and my body was screaming at me to push with every pore. I turned to apologise to my neighbour and suggested through gritted teeth that we ought to abandon all hope of reaching the clinic and turn into the maternity ward of the hospital instead because quite frankly I doubted we'd make it much further.

I could see panic flit across his face at the prospect of me giving birth in his car. I was trying to ring my husband and forgot to turn off the phone. Later we listened to the recorded message of me trying to tell him I was there, and getting overwhelmed by a really painful contraction, then another then another.

At the green light, the guy turned right and tore down to the maternity department, handily situated on the ground floor for just such emergencies, and rushed in crying "Il y une femme qui accouche dans ma voiture!!!" (there's a woman giving birth in my car!!!).

A wheelchair arrived, someone hoisted me onto it, hurried me to the birthing room, removed my clothes (with difficulty - dungarees and boots), got me onto the table and I was just putting my feet in the stirrups when, whoosh! the little lad came storming out at 8.55am. We'd arrived just 5 minutes earlier.

After that I went into shock.

He hit the ground running, that one, and he hasn't stopped since. Today's pressies included a skateboard and small ramp, and he's taking his pals paint-balling tomorrow morning. After that, I'm off on holiday while he goes up to Paris to exhaust his dad.

Hunt-a-Bike

The sales are on, are they not? Shops are supposedly desperately knocking off ever higher %ages in order to shift stock.

Well not in junior mountain bikes they aren't. I've just come back from a fruitless excursion to no less than 4 shops in search of a 24" VTT (mountain bike) for my youngest. First stop Intersport. There were adult bikes in the sale, and crappy kiddy bikes in the sale, but was there a junior 24" VTT? Nope. We left the shop into strong gusts and spats of rain. Lovely.

Next stop, Decathlon. There used to be about 4 shops each specialising in different sports. This was, of course, highly irritating because not many people could remember exactly what each shop had, and would have to go on a tour of Montpellier and Lattes in order to find the right stuff. Now they've rationalised all into one huge MegaDec right next door to Ikea which makes it much less frustrating.

However, it turned out that this mega store had not one 24" VTT in the sale, but just adult and kiddy bikes, and my temper, already tested by a day of bad weather, housework and issues, was fraying by the second. When asked why there were so few bikes in the sale, no sensible answer could be found. I just got a feeble "Dunno really, we just have this season's bikes." Fine, said I, and stalked back to the car, trying to resist the urge to trip up a smallish boy who was doing handbrake turns in the middle of the aisle with his baby sister's buggy.

Back outside, the gale was settling in nicely. I headed off and reached a specialist shop, WinBike. They did have bikes in the sale, down from 460 euros to 430 euros. I was easily able to contain my excitement at discovering this 'bargain', looked around for a more sensible price, found none in the sale and gave up. My youngest was being very supportive about the whole thing, making horrified noises at the price and suggesting we leave.

We went briefly next door to a depot-vente place owned by what looked like two dodgy geezers, stayed less than a minute because they didn't inspire confidence in selling anything that could be returned if defective, and decided to call it a day.

By this time, the car was being buffetted around and it was quite a challenging drive home.

Once back, a brief tour of the internet found this bike at Auchan. It's a Laurent Fignon (whoever he may be) Trak 10kg which sounds good, and costs a much more reasonable 150 euros. It's not in the sale either - no surprise there - but at that price, it's not so bad. Heaven knows what sort of quality it is. I'm not sure it's a great idea to buy a bike from a hypermarché but there's no way I'm spending 300+ euros on one from some sale-free store. Anyway, I would of course, look it over first, not that I'm any expert, and make sure it doesn't rattle about or have dodgy gears.

Who would have thought bike hunting could be such a dire undertaking? I'm off to recover now with a nice cuppa and maybe something trashy on tele.

TGO - Chateau d'Aumelas

My youngest is on a mission - he aims to visit all the ruined castles in the area.

Yesterday, being a lovely day, we decided to take a picnic and head out west towards Gignac. Just before St Paul et Valmalle, we left the motorway and drove to the commune of Aumelas. There, on the hill is the Château d'Aumelas which is a splendid ruin.

He had found it in my book of local walks, so all we needed to do was to find the starting point. Easier said than done, but in no way surprising for this book which has to be the worst book of walks ever written. It assumes that you buy the IGN map that goes with the area, but as these are quite difficult to come by, one has a tendancy to find oneself just relying on the descriptions in the book. To one's cost.

Invariably I get lost, and yesterday was no exception. The only difference was that I couldn't even find the starting point! Driving around getting more and more irritated, I finally decided to give up and just find a likely track. Needless to say, the castle isn't signposted, but you can see it quite clearly from the valley. The trick is to find a path up!

I made it, and we managed to push our bikes up the hill onto the plateau. It was not the best route, but once up, I saw plenty of likely tracks that we could explore after lunch.

My youngest was ecstatic at the prospect of all the exploring he could do, and set to it straight away despite my rumbling stomach. I let him have a good run about amongst the ruins, and then called for order, and found a nice sheltered spot in the sun for lunch.

I don't know why, but I'm always surprised when I see other people at these places. For some reason I expect the ruins to sit proud in solitary splendour, and to have it to ourselves to explore as temporary masters.

It's a terrific one to explore as it's big with lots of ruins to climb on, look through and crawl into. The weather was glorious with a blue sky and amazingly warm sun considering that it's November. I was out in my tee-shirt after the exertion of climbing the hill.

We then went and did some mountain biking on the tracks of the causse (plateau). They were large enough to allow emergency vehicles through in case of fire, and were fairly flat, being on the top of the plateau.

My youngest is a member of the local VTT (mountain bike) club and has learnt how to ride, go down hills, change gear and other technical aspects of biking. He is now much more confident and fairly tears along.

The view from the top was a magnificent panorama that stretched west as far as the Plateau de Larzac, with the autumnal vineyards glowing gold and red in the sun depending on the variety down in the valley.

The dungeons lurked in the depths of the ruins, no longer scary with piles of rubble where miscreants crouched previously. Secret passages connected one bit of ruin to another, my youngest finding them all and calling out his discoveries.

When it was time to go, we took the same path down, by bike. I was amazed at how my youngest attacked the stony slope with confidence and expertise. I followed at a more sedate pace, not having taken a course, and not entirely confident about what I was doing.

However, we arrived intact, our arms a blubber of crazily shaken muscles, and sat for a while to let them recover.

I now have a vague idea about where the path should have started, and do actually intend to buy an IGN map of the area to show where all the tracks lead. It's a terrific area for VTT what with being pretty flat, with fabulous views, and a huge area in which to cycle.

At only 25km from Montpellier, it's also quick and easy to reach. We'll be back...

A Witch By Any Other Name...

I think my youngest's teacher is a witch. Not one with black pointy hat and a toadstool growing on the end of her nose, but a witch all the same.

Last night I went to the parents' evening for his class. I had tried to go last Tuesday because he had assured me that that was when it was, and as he's usually right about such things, I believed him. Unfortunately, that was the time he got it wrong... I turned up wondering why I was the only parent around to find the teacher sitting at a desk, bespectacled, marking books. Upon seeing me, she looked up over her glasses in one of those frigid French women of a certain age ways and asked frostily if she could help.

I asked about the parents' meeting and instead of just answering with a 'no, it's next week' she went all snippy on me and said she assumed I hadn't read the 'cahier de liaison'. Well, obviously not - I don't spend my days waiting until my youngest gets home whereupon I can leap on his school-bag and fish out his cahier. This apparently makes me a bad, uncaring mother in her eyes. Like us parents have got nothing better to do with our time (like go out to work to earn the crust that pays for the rented roof over our heads and puts fresh food on the table) than be obliged to read the damned cahier Every Evening!

That was the day I declared officially that I disliked my youngest's teacher.

Yesterday I confirmed my official declaration. She was trying to do the 'caring teacher' act, greeting parents as they arrived with a handshake that enfolded you in a vice-like grip just daring you to challenge her as Boss. She was smiling, but the smile didn't reach her eyes, and she reminded me very strongly of a reptile.

She's one of those small mighty French women. Must be 55 if she's a day, with a voice that cuts glass, short 'big' hair, speaking the most impeccable French you've ever heard. All the parents were suddenly on their best regressive behaviour making every effort to speak grammatically correctly so they wouldn't get a smack...

She lacked human warmth which is why I made the association with reptiles I suppose. To impart all that she had to tell us, she read from reams of paper - the academic cursus, extra activities like sport, English and music (they'll be doing frisbee in sport at some point!), the rules and regulations, and all the things she wants to do to ensure our little darlings end the year well.

I found it very jarring, this contrast between what she read and the sincerity with which she read it. I decided to ask a question, whether my youngest could leave the school and come home by himself at the end of the day. We live 3 minutes from the school, with no major road to cross, and at the weekend, he's going down there all the time.

I detected a sharp intake of breath and she gave me the 'bad parent' look again. All I wanted to know was whether she was obliged to physically hand my son to me, or his brother or another person. There was a ruffle of disapproval amongst the other parents - what sort of a mother was I who could ask such a question. Didn't I know the Risks?

Well, the answer was 'no', she didn't have to hand him over (as they do in the class below), but she suggested that it was probably a good idea to have my son picked up. I do pick him up, or send my eldest, but at some point, he's going to be able to come home by himself, and I just wanted to know what the rules were. So now I know. There are no rules. Just moral blackmail.

Often at these meetings you get parents who just can't shut up. They ask a question, it gets answered, then they feel they have to justify why they asked it, or they repeat themselves, then that gets answered too, and they go on. It drives me nuts. There were one or two candidates for not shutting up last night, but they managed to restrain themselves. After 30minutes we were done, and I rushed out, rushed home, and put the kettle on.

Then I checked the cahier de liason...

Rentrée 2008

La Rentrée. Today, schoolchildren all over France were wending their way, many with their parents, back to school.

My youngest was going into CE1, which means he's no longer in the 'baby' class of his primary school and can lord it over all the little new kids. He made no particular effort to dress for the occasion. No smart pair of slightly too big trousers all beautifully pressed. No gleaming white shirt with collar and buttons. No, my hero went in his football shorts and Arsenal footie shirt.

Our new neighbours, on the other hand, were impeccably turned out, with brushed hair to boot. I had only just managed to get my son in the shower the day before. It was pretty warm here, so I'm glad he took the casual approach to clothes for his first day.

Perfect mummies like to dress their young'uns as young men. It's very popular here, especially with families in the big houses. What I say is, they don't do their own ironing, so it's easy to have beautifully turned-out kids. I let mine choose what they want to wear, and they never ever want to wear shirts with collars, which lets me off the hook quite nicely thank you!

Apparently he had a good day, and has made friends with the new neighbours who seem to be very nice boys. I thought he would be going to school tomorrow too, but how wrong I was. They have the morning off, no idea why, and start again on Thursday.

On the other hand, my eldest starts his new private school tomorrow, so is unavailable to bro-sit. Not sure if I can get him into childcare or not. Maybe the teachers will all go on strike on Thursday just to really get back into the swing of things. There's usually some Rentrée issue that brings them all out in force.

Or maybe it's just that the shock of going back to work after 2 months off is just too much for them... Yeah, I think I'd be keen to strike too!

Sessions with a Speech Therapist

My youngest has always had a husky voice. It was pretty cute as a toddler. Now, however, it's become obvious that he has a problem. There are days when he comes home from school barely able to articulate his desire for food. His school maitresse told me that often he shouts so much in the playground that he can't read out loud in the afternoon.

Of course, that might be intentional...

Still, there comes a point when Something Should be Done. So it was off to the GP who sent us to the specialist who prescribed speech therapy. My youngest is a boy who is not afraid of others. This lands him in trouble from time to time not least at school. The speech therapist was having a nice chat to him about his friends one of whom was being annoying.
"Why was he annoying you?" she asked.
"Because I was twisting his arm" came the matter-of-fact reply.

We could not stop ourselves from laughing.

Every day he must now do various exercises to retrain his voice. Being a serious child, he goes along with this although when asked if he was interested in improving his voice, he had answered 'No'.

I suppose I should be thankful that he's cooperative. I get the feeling, however that he has a secret agenda which has nothing to do with his voice. That's my youngest all over.