As I burn the dinner:

Child number 3 (the Professor) is skateboarding.

The Face (child number 2) is supervising and tutoring the Professor.

Fatty (child number 5) is the audience in it’s entirety. So that I can type this piece, I am allowing him free access to some dried apricots. What a nappy filled day I’m going to enjoy tomorrow.

Meanwhile, our very jolly and very reasonable neighbour, has the volume set to MAX for the French news.  She enjoys the boys skateboarding so much that perhaps she wants them to enjoy listening to the radio at the same time?

The Prodigal, who has calmed down since this afternoon’s mania, is upstairs doing? I just don’t want to know. The Lips (child number 4) ISN’T winding up anyone so I’ll find him once the smoke alarm goes off which will mean dinner is ready.

The Husband remains in Paris. I can’t blame him. I’d remain in Paris if I could…. (he says a new sex shop has opened in the street his flat is in. I’m wondering why he felt the need to tell me this. He then told me he had bought me a present. Are these two statements related?).

(I can hear the neighbour’s French news even over P.M., radio 4, played through speakers in the kitchen. She REALLLY enjoys skateboarding. In fact, and as another aside, the Prodigal revealed that Hers were the first, real live breasts he ever saw. He also revealed to having seen his girlfriend’s mother naked…….and one of my friends)

The dinner now having been eaten (a lasagne so wobbly that perhaps, in my knackered and worn down state, I had confused lasagne sheets with gelatine?), it is time to sum up the day’s events:

– dream that husband dies which gives me that SUDDEN WAKEY WAKEY horror  just before the bell tolled 6 a.m. (yes, in our village, the bell tolls on the hour…..and if not on the hour, then sometime around the hour that was…..half an hour since or will be – it is on a need to know basis, clearly).

-perhaps, as I awoke, I screamed as the Prof and the Lips are soon in my bed and fighting over who is next to mummy.

-The Face gets up at 6.30 for school.

-The Prof, in doing some mighty calculation in his head, wriggles and I kick him out of the bed

-I doze off and have a continuation of the husband dying dream

– MUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! gently whispers Fatty.

The day begins.

It is a Wednesday which means no school for the Prof and the Face. And, as usual, Mother Hubbard’s cupboards are bare. Off to the supermarche we go.  Need I say anymore on that? You all know the scene – untethered goats is the best description I ever read describing taking children (not French children….they behave) around a supermarket.

I pick the Rubbish Queue. I have a talent for this. I wait…..we wait, rather. I shout. They misbehave. It feels like a lifetime has past (mine), I see but pretend not to see the woman behind me who only has two items to my piles of toilet paper, dog food and doughnuts, watermelon…… I can feel her eyes boring into my head ‘see me. see me and let me go in front’ – I look away….. treat others as you want to be treated yourself? Not today, my friend.

Load the car. Wonder at the shoppers who, rather than walk an extra what? few metres to the opposite trolley park,  have added trolleys to the long, long lines (x 3) of parked trolleys which just about allow one car to pass by.

Next errand: Tennis inscription, as they say here. Booking the kids in for some tennis lessons.

FAIL (the tennis club has a very full internet site. So full that they couldn’t squeeze in the opening times)

Next errand: unloading the car by juggling the multi coke pack, baguette, a cantaloupe and large dog food bag

FAIL (who would have thought that the cantaloupe would make so much mess as it slipped onto the tarmac?)

The Prodigal does me a good turn. He follows Fatty around whilst I do some vacuuming upstairs.

Meanwhile, the FAce returns from school beaming with delight as he got 3/3 for maths…………..

The Prodigal, later, does me a bad turn when I agree to allow him out to meet his friends in the forest (no, not a name of a bar…..an actual forest) on the condition that he doesn’t drink. He seems to feel that the condition is unfair. We exchange some not very nice words. I go looking for my keys to lock the exits………AGAIN.

Good things today:

my dream didn’t come true.

I managed 10 mins on the rowing machine without ONE child standing so close next to me that I knock them over with my stride (or whatever you call a pull of the rower).

I took the five kids and the dog to my friend’s house and let them run around wildly.

I have one follower of my blog!!!!! Pride – self pride but still…..

And now:

Off to sanitise the Prof, the Lips and Fatty. Clean up after dinner. Do the washing. Clear up the MESS until it all starts over again tomorrow.

Bonne soirée

 

 

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