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??