Bilan Week 1

End of Week 1 of la Rentrée. How's it gone? Better than expected actually. Getting up at 6.30am is a bugger, but I'm sure I'll get used to it in the next 5 years or so... On the other hand, my eldest is picked up and delivered home every evening by another mummy who works just around the corner and it's no skin off her nose if she takes my son along with her daughter. So that is a very marvellous stroke of luck and I'm just wondering what I can do to express my total appreciation and gratitude apart from showering her with booze (which is what I'd go for if it was me...).

The private school is fine - he'll be doing Latin which immediately streams a certain sort of child into a certain level of class and despite his father saying it's useless, it's not for various reasons. He'll also be doing 4hrs of sport per week and this term it'll be athletics which should go down very well. Later, they'll be doing climbing and volleyball etc.

My youngest is happy with his class too and it seems I did buy the right book covers so the world will not end because of that. It might end next Wednesday when they switch the Large Hadron Collider on, but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it...

Today was the Journées des Associations which is a dead handy way of gathering together all the activities you can do in the town/village under one roof so that residents can come and register with no trouble. The French are very good at organising their spare time, even more so since they have so much of it thanks to the 35-hr week. I'm not complaining; I'm the first in line to say how fab it is as it means I can ferry my children about the place so they can have a fun-filled youth full of meaningful activities to widen their horizons and enhance their spirits... In other words, I provide a full taxi service.

My youngest wants to continue doing footie; a nice healthy sport with lots of running around, teamwork, skill and fresh air. My eldest however, announced he didn't want to anything, except maybe fencing. This announcement went down like a lead balloon as the fencing classes take place in the middle of Montpellier at hours when traffic is at its worst, and equipment costs a fortune. I put my foot down which of course made him want to do it even more. We then had a discussion about 'you can do it when you can take yourself there and pay for it' and that was that. The alternative solution was to go and live with his father cos NewChick does fencing apparently and strangely enough the desire to do it turned out to be not that strong, as I suspected...

What to do then. I was determined that he do something with some of his free time. He was determined that he do nothing with his free time. Guess who won... hehe. I took him to the village next door which is bigger than ours and has more activities. There I signed him up for mountain biking (VTT) which he'll do every Saturday afternoon from 2-4pm. He reluctantly agreed that this might be okay if he had a decent bike, so we'll check out the one he's got and if it's too crappy he'll have a new one for his birthday at the end of the month.

It's difficult to imagine a boy of nearly 12 being sulky about doing something as exciting, dangerous and thoroughly boyish as mountain biking, but he managed it, partly I think so as not to lose face over his original attitude. Oh happy pre-ado days! I'm confident he'll love it and probably be very good at it too.

By golly though it was hard work and I came home and had to lie down for ten minutes to calm the throbbing in my head from irritation.

And me, what am I doing? Well, I signed up at the tennis club again, not for lessons or any of that official, competitive stuff - just to have the key so I can go and play when I like.

Anyone for tennis??

Tennis aux Araignés

I feel quite pooped this evening. We were out playing tennis - the boys, RA and I. I use the phrase 'playing tennis' quite loosely, you understand. It's more 'muck about' than recognisable tennis, but the RA has a good whacking hand which may come in handy in a few years... and I can sneak the odd shot in a funny place quite by accident.

The boys have fun too. My eldest plays with us, and my youngest rides his bike then takes over another court with me and I throw balls at him. He gets them back to me as best he can. The net is not far off his actual height, so he does pretty well getting the balls over to me, and he is definitely making progress. I use special red spot soft balls with him to stop him straining his wrist. We bought three, promptly lost two, found one from somewhere else; our current tally - 2.

The other players on the courts were not much better than us, if at all... Two young lads played on one and used enthusiasm and strength as compensation for lack of skill, and on the other court was a little girl playing with her mother. There seemed to be a competition going on down on the non-reservable courts from the sounds of polite clapping that came forth from there.

The weather was fresh but sunny - perfect for running about. It's one of the more appealing aspects of living down here, the fact that we have such sublime weather for so much of the year.

When the boys got bored, they went and climbed up the bank behind the courts and then yelled to me to show me how clever they were. I was, actually, trying to play tennis with RA at the time, and it was a little off-putting to say the least. As I said to her, I bet Jimmy Connors doesn't have to cope with such distractions, but in fact, I'm not sure she knows who JC is, and such references are just further proof of my advancing years!

I am now bathing in the smug glow of the effects of my exercise despite following it with a G&T to cheer up NG. There's no doubt; exercise does wonders for blowing away the cobwebs. All I have to do now is attack those I left on my ceilings which I told myself added authenticity to my Halloween deccies which came down this morning.

Especially as those voracious insectivores are proving pretty useless at keeping the flour mite population down, as are the sticky traps which are still empty after 2 weeks although the mites are flying around without a care in the world.

Come to think of it though, we don't have any mosquitoes...

Another year...

It was my birthday yesterday. I'm in a quandry as I now can't decide whether I'm still in my early forties or mid-forties. I think I'll stick with 'early' for the time being and work up slowly to 'mid'. Don't want to rush such serious implications to aging...

It was a nice day despite working half of it. I do Wednesday mornings now so I can take the afternoons off and taxi the boys to their various activities : violin and footie. After a refreshing cuppa we all headed off to play tennis and showed anyone passing how crap we are. It was a laugh though, which is the main thing, and I did get more-or-less an hour's worth of running about. This will do wonders to see off those couch potato floppy bits if I can keep it up.

Since the age of about 12 I've had two pairs of trainers. The first pair were uncool Adidas; the ones with three green stripes down the side. My ex-h saw them and declared them unfit for purpose ie. looking sporting good so I indulged him and bought a pair of tennis-type shoes which I've had ever since. It looks suspiciously like I don't do much sport, doesn't it? Two pairs of sports shoes in 21 years, but I'm just light on my feet... Honest.

The result is, of course, that my trainers are woefully un-trendy and probably unfit for tennis purposes too if the truth be told. Enticingly, us footie mums can get 20% off trainers from the local sports shop. If I can just get my paws on the tokens...

Another year, another day. I'm 43 and life is good.