Today, we drove past two teenaged blokes who were standing at the corner of a busy roundabout with their thumbs out, looking very bored, very cold and very going nowhere soon. 

B looked at them as we passed and let out a long, drawn out "Ooh la la la la".  A favourite expression of his where the last syllable is so long and low it is impossible to ignore it as anything other than an acknowledgement of doom and as such is usually reserved for crimes committed by his fellow maternelle-ettes.  

S leaned towards him,  "You know, they were left there by their mummy" and left a well-timed pause so that his small brother could soak up that terrible fact, before adding "She'd had enough of them arguing in the back so she stopped and put them out.  And she might never ever come back".  Long pause.  Then he switched back to his usual upbeat twitter of "Eh, maman, c'est vrai?".

Mmm.  Now, do I  agree with S and let my boys think that the ritual turfing out onto the roadside for bickering is commonplace and whereas I may only threaten to do it, other mothers ACTUALLY do it?  And to boys who are even quite big!  And look!  There's the absolute proof of it, seen with your own actual eyes.  Or do I tell them that there is such a thing called hitchhiking?

23 days into 2009.

Fuck my old boots - it's already 23 January 2009.  Being caught in the yuletide maelstrom that was blowing around Corseul, I have been unable to get my trotters to my keyboard until now.  Shameful.  But something I will learn to live with, I'm sure.

Just 21 days into the new year, and we have lurched into the full scale drama of having to sort out a condemned woodburner.  Having already just spent 24,000 euros on a heat pump in November so that we actually have hot water and heating simultaneously (not much to ask in today's modern times, surely?), our woodburner on the ground floor was condemned by the chimney sweep and we are unable to use it until a liner has been installed and the correct, slightly pedantic, legislative procedures for owning a woodburner are followed.  Mmm.  Seeing as père Noël gave me a Singer sewing machine for Christmas (to speed up work in future Chinese Christmas sweatshop ventures on behalf of the school), I am considering running up a gown consisting of 10€ notes, taking to the streets and allowing passer-bys to just pick notes off me, as and when.  Or perhaps, I could run up 20 metres of chimney lining out of a length of flame retardant toile de jouy.  And then again, maybe not.

Since the condemnation, there has been a steady ant trail of representatives from various chimney companies, and fear and panic has risen to unprecidented levels; knowledge is a dangerous thing.  Confirmed.  With no carbon monoxide alarms positioned next to any of our fireplaces, I'm now thinking that the odorless, deadly gas will smite me and my family at any moment.  As I light the second floor's woodburner of a chilly evening, I believe I can smell the mouldering smokey smell of burning beams in the attic where the legal 16cm gap between the woodburner's liner and the main roof beams is missing, along with the reinforced steel plate required by law.  And since the Sweep of Doom passed by, I have woken every hour during the night in a cold panic that the house is burning down and the first thing the firemen and police will notice is not the charred remains of my children and dog - but no - there are no air grills in the windows where a fireplace is present.  For crying out loud.  The windows are so draughty that there seems little point in putting a council house style twirly thing in a pane of glass, but apparently if there isn't one in each room where there's a woodburner, our home insurance will be null and void.  Every single flipping year, it seems that the rules change and more alterations and tweakings are needed to escape death and comply with the insurance company's small print.  In about 8 years' time, I will actually be living in what can only be described as a brick colander.  And I will die of hypothermia.

In between fielding appointments with specialists in panic-mongering, thievery and chimneys, the school is still keeping me busy - natch.  Thank the Lord there are no manifestations planned till March, but am already slowly cranking towards the Easter fete.  There was I, all poised with my Singer, ready to rattle off rabbits and shit (oh, perhaps the latter won't be a big seller), only to realise that the French do not get their Easter eggs delivered by the Easter Bunny and the only significance a rabbit holds for them is for a bit of a boil up in the pot of an evening, with some petits pois à la française.  No, the French get their Easter eggs from a bell with wings that flies through the air from Rome and as it tolls, deposits an egg.  Freakish, but true.  I think they have some issues left over from 1944 to work through still.  A winged bell is so much less charming than a rabbit.  The fête de Paques has disaster written all over it already that not even an egg fashioned from a pretty cotton lawn from Liberty's will fix.

And as if that wasn't enough to set the standards for 2009, there is further grimness on the horizon; me and my little Ming dynasty must break out from mainland Europe to celebrate my mother's "significant" birthday in London in February.  I am trying to be positive about it.  I am.  But she is highly complicated and keen to see the bad side of things so am readying myself for a difficult day.  My sister has booked all 17 family members for a whirl round on the London Eye as the starting point.  Mmm.  I'm already planning my wardrobe according; low heels with a good grip so they can get a good purchase on the pavement as we all have to get behind and push my mother into the pod much like a wilful racehorse into the starting blocks, only for her to lie prostrate on the central benches throughout the 'flight' with her eyes glued tight as it affects her middle ear too much to stand.  

It can only get better.  Can't it?

Christmas market

With the spectre of the Christmas market looming ever closer, for the past two weeks I have been trying to motivate my fellow mamans into helping create gorgeous bijoux items to sell on the school's stall.  Mmm.  Whoever thought the French had impeccable style and taste obviously never hung out with the creative hotshots round here.  I am, in short, rapidly losing the will to live.  Whilst I have dug deep and released my inner Martha Stewart, fashioning christmas trees from ric rac I found whilst jostling for service for some embroidery threads in a tiny haberdashery shop in Plancoet that smelt of wheat and talc, the other mothers are taking inspiration from colour blind two year olds and magazines that show, in 10 easy to make steps, how to turn ugly rubbish into, well, different ugly rubbish yet with a decorative slant.

On Monday I held a workshop for the willing few and thought I'd hit creative gold by roping in someone who told me that they made "stunning" table decorations.  Turns out she lied.  "Stunning" is not the term I would have used for blob of stale bread with two holes gouged out and plugged with two red candles so that they stick out like Spacehopper handles and then gluing clots of tinsel and random plastic figurines on sale from Lidl (which, incidentally, when said by S. in his heavy Eurotrash accent, actually sounds like an exclusive thermal spa resort of the 1920's) before receiving a final squirt of fake snow.  All of the maman helpers were delighted with their efforts and went onto to gamefully churn out 16 of these creations that will provide the mainstay of our stall.  Yesterday, I wrapped them in cellophane to give them the wedding veil treatment and when the big reveal is made at the customer's home, we luckily will have already pocketed their six euros and packed up for the day. 

Back in Camp Anglais, I am hand-stitching button snowmen onto toile, loosely stuffed with cinnamon and lavender to hang off the christmas tree so when they fall off for the millionth time over Christmas at least they will emit a faint puff of scent.  Mmm.  Last count?  Why, nine of them.  Ahh.  Understanding why  Nike employ children for their similarly thankless task of stitching footballs.  They are not fools.  I, however, clearly am.  For when I'm finally through with my bodkin and buttons, I'm on door wreath-making duty, weaving together foliage harvested from the hedgerows, local produce and the skin from my finger tips and I, quite frankly, I don't think they'll be lurid and gling gling enough for the target market.  God damn it.

One mother gave me a magazine that she said was full of great ideas and thought they were so marvellous she actually wrote her name on the magazine lest it slip unnoticed into my collection, or I might be tempted to keep it.  Or perhaps she feared that it may end up in my recycling pile whilst on loan.  I tell you, it was so difficult to choose between making the reindeer place settings using an old wine cork, four burnt matchsticks, a jolly glitter tassel tail and a paper cut-out head and the tea light made from an old glass yoghurt pot rolled in glitter that I put the magazine down and haven't looked at it since for inspiration.  I know thrift is the new black this season, but taste never goes out of style.

Don't get me wrong.  I am very grateful for the help that is being offered by the other maman helpers, it's just that it needs such careful channelling.  And they need to WANT to be channelled.  And that, is hard to come by in these parts.

It really doesn't help that the one mother who is really very good at art is avoiding me after I made a careless, glib comment to her weeks ago that just did not translate in the way it was meant and I have managed to mortally offend her for ever more.  The short of it was her complaining about the amount of toy catalogues coming through the door in the build-up to Christmas.  I snorted in agreement and said (or thought I was saying) that the Jouet Club magazine, in particular, was like "toddler porn". Mmm.  After the loud whoosh of complete stillness, she looked at me, all horrified and said very slowly "You give your children porn to read?".  No.  No.  No.  I desperately trying to re-explain and say "I don't give them porn to read; it's just that those magazines, for them, are like I would imagine porn is to over 18s, not that I've ever really seen any anyway...not even films or that...or...well", I ended up trailing off  rather hopelessly as Mme I'll-Never-Draw-Again-For-This-School-Again mother's stoney stare silenced me. We haven't made eye contact since.   And right now? Why I curse the moment I thought I was being insightful about christmas marketing tactics aimed at the maternelle.

Yep. Two weeks.  Eight creatively challenged helpers.  Three puncture wounds.  And one big cold shoulder.  My presidential cabinet is looking a little wobbly.

I was, in a twist of supreme irony, elected la présidente down the school three weeks ago which is still making me giggle and panic in equal measures.  I think I was just elected so that the meetings are a whole lot jollier on account that everyone else will be rolling around with laughter as I clammily conjugate my sentences.  Pascal, the current and re-elected tresorier and mastermind behind the last fundraiser - la country soirée (picture Star Wars bar meets Brokeback Mountain and then go for a lie down because that image is just too much to keep in your head) - is livid.  He was clearly one of the four votes that I didn't get and was keen to make that perfectly clear to me.

I, however, am made of spit and stones and he would do well to bear that in the back of his tiny mind, just next to the huge void between his ears.  E is so over-excited about it all.  Keen to play the role of Carla to my Sarko, recently caught him thumbing through my copy of Grazia, no doubt trying to work out which shoes work best with his dishing-out-merguez-and-couscous-Dior wardrobe.  Or possibly not.

 

The man from Maternelle says "non!"

Back in the summer I was asked by the boys' headmistress if I would go on a course, work really hard and by the end of it come out with a qualification so that I could then teach English at their school.  I gave her proposition very careful thought and after a long drawn-out pause of a full twelve seconds, I said 'yes, I would".

I was really very flattered to be asked.  Perhaps she saw that I had a spark of something that I never knew I had; an aurora of authority, nurture and intelligence; the potential to inspire and instruct?  Mmm.  Or perhaps it was because I was the token English mother, lived 100 metres from the school gates and was perceived to lounge around, eating chocolates and watching quiz shows until the boys came home because I wasn't in paid employment.  

Then two weeks after, she changed schools.  I like to think her reasons were legitimate and not because she'd had second thoughts about asking me.  Besides, if anyone was having second thoughts, it was me.  The only children I like are my own and certain select and random others belonging to friends; for me, patience is a card game rather than a quality that I am proud to possess; and classrooms make me feel a little panicky.  But hey, neither Jean Pierre Jeunet nor Christian Tortu were beating down my door with other offers to tempt me from the sink, so from the beginning of September, eager to prove that I did possess a spark of brilliance and not because I was the only candidate, I helped out with the English classes, voluntarily.

And now, I've just been dealt a bitter blow by the school who said that, despite my willingness to give hours of free English lessons on a weekly basis, they are not prepared to stretch the truth to get me on the course which would give me a qualification for teaching English as a foreign language.  Mmm.  All they had to say to the people running the course is that I am currently salaried by the school for the helping children to take the 'z' out of 'the'.  That's all.  Not a dreadful lie.  Just a tiny, little, white one that makes out that I'm already being paid, when I am clearly not.  But no.  Not keen.  I like to think it is a new requirement for those on the course and not something they knew all along when I was first asked by them.  Surely they are not capable of such skullduggery, are they?  They give my children pictures of Jesus to colour in for Goodness' sakes. 

Today, sensing that I may be frustrated by their reticence to bullshit me into the realms of "employable" , they've tried to jolly me along by asking me to select a 'chanson anglais' that is both 'joli' and 'traditionel', yet for the children to sing at the forthcoming l'arbre de noel celebrations. 

Ah-ha, the perfect opportunity for pay-back.  In fact, so perfect that I am almost inclined to continue typing whilst stroking Super Gary the guinea-pig in a  plan-hatching Bond villain stylee if only he didn't make me too nervous to concentrate on the keys.  He's a bit of a biter and I've told the boys so many times his eyes are red because really they're lasers that I've actually started to believe it myself.  Mmm. 

So minus Super Gary...but still with certain frisson, a plan is starting to hatch...Mwa-ha-ha...

What I need is a song that shows them that they are missing an absolute trick by not having me on the payroll - either pretend or for real.  Without me and my mother tongue, their children will be forever stuck on stating the prevailing weather conditions, what colour their t-shirts are and how many ice-creams they would like.  

Swinging into action as I got home, googled up 'traditional Christmas songs' and there, a little way down under the usual suspects of "Little Drummer Boy" and "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas", there it was..."Santa Baby"... Bingo!  Fantastic!  In my mind, I see fifty children a-swaying and a-singing entirely inappropriately yet still rather charmingly "Santa cutie, fill my stocking with a duplex, and cheques".  In my mind, I see it all every bit as achingly glorious as the part in Little Miss Sunshine when Olive finally gets to do her song at the beauty pageant.  Call it a kind of festive homage.  What could be better?  It's jolly.  Sweet.  Christmas-y.  And previously performed by Marilyn Monroe.  Perfect.

I print off the lyrics and am all ready to dash down to the school to start preparations when B.  breaks off from arranging small vehicles into a huge traffic jam across the kitchen and blocks my exit from the front door.

"What have you got in your hand?", he asks, no doubt rather hoping it something for him, preferably to eat.

"A piece of paper.  Can I get past, please?" I reply in a dull, let-me-just-get-past-quickly sort of voice.

"Show me!" says B., not being palmed off.

"Look!" I say, "It's just a little Christmas song and it sort of goes like this...Santa Baby, slip a sable under the tree, for me.  I've been an awful good girl.  Santa Baby, hurry down the chimney tonight...Sa..." I start in my ghastly why-housewives-shouldn't-audition-for-X-Factor voice.

"Maman?" B. bellows trying to be heard, cutting me dead in my tracks.

"What???  Don't you like it? Isn't it quite funny and jolly?  Wouldn't you like to sing it with all your little friends? No?" I gabble defensively and a little taken aback that he's interrupted my rendition.

"It's not 'baby'.  You can't say 'baby'.  Santa's not a baby. Santa's a big boy.  Like me."

"Oh".  I should perhaps point out that the word 'Baby' in our house does tend to be seen as an arch insult between the boys and used to jeer and torment one another with it in a kind of "you're a baaaaby" type way.   For S. and B., although actual babies themselves are very sweet and funny,they absolutely can't do anything that they, as big boys, can do and so are therefore everso slightly rubbish.  So yes, I  can see why perhaps the man who can and does once a year would never be called a 'baby'.  In the stingingly logical world of la maternelle, how on earth would a baby Santa lift that sack?

"Don't you like it then?"  I venture gingerly.

"No I don't.  But you can sing Santa Big Boy, if you want" said B, brightening at his own suggestion.  So did I, until I had processed the visual of M. le Maire with his rudimentary grasp of English, head cocked quizzically to one side.  And then I felt distinctly unbright.

"No.  We can't.  I guess I'll have to find something else to sing" I mumble, abject and miserable that I have failed to even get la maternelle vote, then turn away from the front door and head back upstairs.

And so here I am.  Again.  Waiting for the printer to finish spewing  out the words to bloody Jingle Bells.  Easy to learn?  Yes.  Traditional?  Yes.  English?  Yes.  Will it urge the headmistress  to send me away on  a course?  Mmm.  Do you know something, my evil plan may just work after all...if I make them sing it for long enough.

point proved

Tonight I had to pick S. up on rushing through his homework too quickly.  For writing 'est' all hoiky-quoiky three times,  I was compelled to point out that even though he may find it easy and rather dull, they are not excuses to be all sloppy and careless.  It doesn't matter if words only have three letters in them, they are still as important as longer ones to write well.  All words are important so all words need to be written so that they can be read.  Especially his words.

Mmm.  Perhaps I did lay it on a bit too thick.  He is only six.

After correcting the 'est's, he handed me the following piece of paper...

 soriy maman fore my teriball writing

I loved it.  I wanted to laugh and cry at the same time.  And it is, officially my most favourite thing, ever.

Point proved, though: Words are important and need to be able to be read.  

Spelling can wait for another day.

 

Stitch & Bitch

During this Wednesday's preparations for the upcoming l'arbre de noël, I, along with other mothers of la maternelle, found ourselves sitting for three hours, threading polystyrene chips onto cotton thread to create the illusion of flurrying snow, driven by the compulsion to be good mothers, and to make the most of  a fabulous opportunity for a good old bitch.

And the perfect topic to bitch about whilst coddling together snow clouds, in an unheated classroom, balanced precariously on unsuitably small and hard wooden chairs that forced our bottoms to hang over the edges like fleshy cycle paniers?  Why the holy grail of Parenthood, of course; our infinite quest of ensuring our children are loved, looked after, respectful, happy and spirited, kept out of mischief and, all this, at minimum financial cost.  Tricky, tricky, tricky.  Especially as here, being so close to the sea, the year is not divided into Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.  No.  It has only two seasons; Open and Shut.  Open starting after Easter through to mid-September and Shut which is all the other months clogging together into one, foul-weathered, contumelious clump.

Things to do with two small boys in Open season are a doddle.  Everywhere is open;  zoos, museums, fun parks, swimming pools are thronging and jolly and the seasonal sport of finding elbow room on a terrasse along with a parking spot in the shade is in full flow.  And there's always the beach, she added, stifling a complacent yawn.

However, Shut is shit.  The beach is wet and windy and there are no cafes or bars open where you can even warm yourself up afterwards over a chocolat chaud.  The zoo is pointless and disappointing; all of the animals are hidden, hunkered down in the far recesses of their houses refusing to grant anyone an audience.  The museums and amusement parks have shut down, waiting for the return of the holidays and with it the students to staff them and  the holidaymakers with their city wages to fill them.  And the only swimming pool open in close proximity to us is the open air one offering arctic swimming conditions, a slide often out of action and a spouty dolphin that spouts either water or ice chips at you as you pass underneath depending on the ambient temperature.

Yep, tricky indeed.

As the voice of bitter experience and steep learning curves, I could write at great length of the horrors of Shut-seasoned-Wednesdays, Brit style; Grasshoppering between craft activities at home; clocking up huge mileage on the quest to find something new to do with two bickering children; scraping at the floor for hours with the back of a butter knife, trying to lift off the rainbow smears of playdoh; queuing for hours at the library to take out books with other short-tempered mothers and pinwheeling children; And finally, getting absolutely no joy or thanks at the end of a day that seems to last a week.  Oh and plus the sad old fact that you've used up all available options for the weekend's entertainment.  God damn it.  

The French, on the other hand, seem to have it all sewn up as they are not at all hung up on doing it all themselves.  No.  They unashamedly leap at the chance to have their children palmed off onto someone skilled in the art of animation who will patiently keep their petits choux happy, fully occupied, and possibly teach them something new.  Usually around the second Saturday in September visitors can wander the empty streets, marvelling at the eerie stillness and enjoying the birdsong, as a huge percentage of the local community cram into their local salle des fêtes.  Great shuffling huddles of parents with their children form around the various desks run by local clubs and societies who are eager for new recruits. Everyone knowing that the only way to survive the long gloomy months of nothing-muchness is succeeding to cajole and enrol your child into as many activities as possible.  It's the best option.  The only other is to try to get them invited round a mate's.   I'm telling you now, when you host birthday parties (ages 2 and up) or have your child's best friend round to play, don't think for one moment you, as the host, can seek solace in an adult conversation.  No chance.  Your child's friend arrives through your door whilst their parent shouts from the safety of the car, hoping you'll hear through the tightly-wound window and over the drone of the running engine, that they'll be back 'vers cinq heures'  before disappearing to spend a blissful two hours, sans gosses.  

Having seen both sides of the die, the way forward is definitely childcare à la française: Yield to it and cast aside the very British guilt about not doing it all yourself, for once and all.  It is liberating.  For, after digesting the sagely advice of a number of other mothers who, like me, want their sofas to be left with some spring in their seats come Easter, this September the boys were enrolled in a rolling rock of activities so that they are now channelling their unspent energy joyfully and wisely on a Wednesday and I no longer find myself bellowing like a fishwife about the perils of indoor ball games by 11am and running the bath at 4.30pm.  Quelle joie.

"Wednesdays.  Pheww.  Sorted." I announced one morning over coffee to a new-to-these-parts mother, fresh in from Hong Kong with her two similarly aged children, as we struggled to hear each other through the howls and hollerings of four children at play.  "S is off to roller hockey on a Tuesday after school till 6pm.  Then he's off to an hour's tennis lesson at 9am on the Wednesday and then both are off to Karate from 4-5.  It's great, isn't it?" I bellowed above din.

"Won't they be a bit exhausted?" she asked, a little gingerly.

"Exactly" I beamed, over-excited to be of some help.

"Well, I don't know..." said Ting Tong from Hong Kong, picking at an imaginary loose thread on her skirt so as to avoid eye contact, "...I would do the same but I really love spending time with my children.  We always have such fun together.  I actually miss them when they are at school."  

Mmm.  Damned and snubbed by a woman who's like Margot Leadbetter from the Good Life, trapped in Barbara Good's lifestyle,  my willingness to share any other potential life-changing nuggets of knowledge were gone, disappeared.   It was all I could do to give her the time to gather up her lovely lovely children who were wrecking my house before booting her out the door, leaving her to wipe the moustache of coffee off, in public, on the lonely walk back to her car.

That evening, I relay the morning's conversation to my husband and part-time honorary bird.

"So annoying.  Stupid bloody woman.  She's never even spent a winter over here.  She has absolutely no idea what's it like.  How dare she make me feel like I'm a crap mother and can't wait to get shot of my kids.  I'm only doing it for them.  It's not for me, I can assure you.  I've got to ferry them here, there and everywhere.  And who's got to hike round the fields in the rain with the dogs killing time till they come out?  Me.  Course it is.  God, it only costs  40 euros to do 32 weeks of roller hockey and have you seen the price of playdoh and those fuzzy pipecleaners?  Christ, I could whip through 40 euros a week..." I stop mid-rant and  look across at my husband, hoping that he is poised, vitriol at the ready, to add to my venomous torrent. No.  He's gazing at some distant spot located somewhere past my right ear, in a glassy trance of disinterest.  I should know.  It's the exact same expression as the one that fixes on my face when he's talking about the intricacies of Spurs' latest team tactics to me.

Mmm.  A wave of fear that we're slightly growing apart washes over me.  I change the subject.

"Next Wednesday, can you come down the school with me?  They need some trees to be cut out of wood."  

What better way to find some unity than some hours spent together, stitching and bitching?