Life throws a curve ball

I don’t know if I’ve been conspicuous by my absence in the last couple of weeks. We’re nearly at the end of a tunnel. Hopefully life will be back to normal in a week or so. I haven’t commented much as I couldn’t concentrate on anything too complicated for a while, though I have been visiting and reading.

This has been helping me everyday

A little bit of Karma

I lot of the time people seen to think of Karma as a revenge thing. Karma is also a good thing too. Sometimes we get the chance to pay back the good karma. Sometimes we don’t realise it, but Karma is paving the way for us too.

Yesterday I went off to supervise exams on the bus. It was early in the morning and the bus was pretty full with students going off to Lycée (they start at 8 in the morning) and some older students. I prefer to sit on my own by the window but I couldn’t, so I asked a young lady if I could sit next to her and she said yes. Then we realised we knew each other. When Dom was at primary school she had a friend who was half Japanese. I always thought that they looked so sweet together, Dom was very fair with big blue eyes and S was dark with big brown eyes. Here she was – all grown up. I used to see quite a bit of the family and Rob loved the way that S’s mum and I managed to communicate in French (neither of us spoke too well back in those days), so of course I asked how everyone was. Apparently her older sister has been very ill with depression. I was able to talk to her about how we all felt when Christian was ill.

A few weeks ago Olivier and I were discussing the same thing and he spoke to me for the first time about how much he hated Christian being ill because everyone was so sad. So I made a point of asking S how she had coped with it all. She seemed pleased to be able to talk about herself.

Isn’t it true that when someone close is ill everyone is very kind and sympathetic, but the immediate family, the people carrying the load get missed somehow?

Raymond Bergevin - Still looking

I was checking my visitor statistics the other morning as usual, when I saw that I’d had a visitor from France looking at my post on Raymond Bergevin. ‘Gosh’, I thought, ‘fame at last’. When I told Rob about it he laughed – it was him. At first he didn’t realise that it was my blog, he only knows about the other two. It didn’t even click when he saw that I was writing about someone called Rob. In fact he though that the post was very well written and was pleased when he finally realised it was me.

Safe sex

This little rant has been niggling under the surface for a long time; every time sex education is mentioned in the UK someone stands up and says that it will encourage teenagers to have sex. It’s not rocket science, but teenagers are naturally interested in sex. It’s to do with the continuation of the species - it’s natural.

Every summer, over here in France, there is a campaign to remind everyone to take their condoms with them on holiday. You can buy them for a euro, indeed packs with 2 or three for a euro, we have machines in the streets, you can buy them at the supermarket and the chemists have them on prominent display. When a certain-young-man-who-shall-remain-nameless was in his early teens, he and his friends spent the summer playing water bombs with condoms bought from the chemist. “They hold a lot of water, you know mum, much better than balloons!” Non of them worried about going in to buy them which means that when they do need one for the pupose for which they were made, they won’t have any hang-ups.

Recently the above mentioned young man attended a university information day. He came back with lots of leaflets including a little book which he showed to me (provided by the student’s branch of our health insurance company). This booklet talked about sex and the different aspects of it. (Some practises of which I’d never even heard of.) The main point running through the whole book was, to practise safe sex, respect for others, relationships and hygiene. (Have you noticed we talk to each other about these things?)

My point is that if you hide it away, kids will educate each other in the worse possible ways and the results are children who aren’t really wanted or loved. I’ve taught young people who’ve grown up knowing they were ‘mistakes’ or ‘accidents’ – not a good start to their lives.

I’ll never be a woman - ugh!

My son said to me as I helped him on with his tights

Let me explain. Today is the ‘Percent’(père cent). One hundred days before the start of the baccalaureate exams. The tradition is that the lycéens in their final year dress up and roam the streets asking for money. They used to throw eggs and flour but that has died out mainly, I hope. One town has banned the practise. Everywhere the hundred days is marked in some special way. You may ask what they do with all the money they collect. They go out and have a good time. Tomorrow serious revision starts – some hopes.

Olivier has gone out dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. (The same costume Dom had for her Percent – I have a sneaking suspicion that he hasn’t asked if he can borrow it yet). He went out and bought a lovely blonde wig with plaits and has borrowed a pair of tights to complete the outfit. I just checked, he forgot his lipstick.

Anyway there we were at 6.30 this morning struggling to put on a pair of tights; he hates them. Rob and I took him to his destination. A certain set of traffic lights. Very popular, some groups camp out all night to bag the busiest lights. There were already some young people out and we gave a few coins to two groups. The costumes are always very well done, in the past I’ve seen chickens, cows, Where’s Wally, ladybirds, clowns and so on. Operating scrubs are very popular. They are all very polite, if you haven’t got any change to give they thank you nicely and wish you good day.

He received his voting card today ‘sniff’.

A friend in need

One of Olivier’s friends is very shy and stutters quite a lot. He has been bullied by his older sister for most of his life. This week he and Olivier discovered that she had created a Facebook account in his name and was chatting to people using it, goodness knows what she was saying on his behalf. The friend was quite upset about this, so when she went out leaving her computer on Olivier changed her password. He came home to eat and dashed back to his friends in order to be there when she came home as he knew that his friend wouldn’t be able to cope with her temper. (Parents had gone away for a few days)

She went berserk and started to insult Olivier. He just walked out on her so she chased him down the road and eventually calmed down enough to ask nicely for her password. Olivier was highly amused at her insult which really showed her true character. ‘All you ever think about is helping your friends’

That’s my boy!

A storm in coffee cup

In French schools it is against the law to have a machine which distributes drinks or food to the pupils. This is because the government is worried about children becoming obese. There are drinks distributors of some sort in most staff rooms (thank goodness). The government aren’t worried about teachers becoming obese, it seems. Olivier got caught with some friends in the staff room at lycée buying cups of coffee. I get the impression that this often happens and as long as the pupils are few and quiet, it’s tolerated. Olivier and his band happen to have been seen by a less tolerant teacher and have been reported. Unfortunately Olivier is like Rob, if he doesn’t see why something is wrong he’ll argue. I hate this attitude. I was brought up to do as I am told without argument. Olivier now has an hours detention ‘work of general interest’ (a bit hard to translate). I expect he’ll be picking up litter.

Missing the Last Boat Home

Neutron has recently been writing about the joys of touring what used to be East Germany. Thanks to him I realised I hadn’t looked to see what my cousin Paul was up to recently (he plays in Germany sometimes too and I’m sure they will meet up). Well, there was quite a lot to catch up on and you can listen to some of his tracks here as well as Missing the Last Boat Home and others and not forgetting my all time favourite Give Me Your Wings. He was scheduled to perform on Loose Ends a couple of years ago. I’m still waiting…

The Changeover

I found magnetic coloured letters the other day in the bottom of a vase,
Hurriedly tidied away one lunch time long ago.
A few weeks before; a box of paints -
“Don’t open those today, use up the old ones”
Never used.

Today my son reaches things down from a high shelf or lifts a heavy bag,
My daughter passes orange juice to me in one of her glasses

When did it change over?

Our Shadow People

If you have never heard of the Shadow People I suggest you read about them here (Though ours seemed to be quite friendly). I started to see our Shadow People as soon as I moved here 22 years ago. They passed in front of the house usually, but it wasn’t until Dom and Olivier were around 10 and 8 that I discovered more about them. I spoke to Dom and Olivier because Christian happens to be the least spiritual (though he’s had more experience – I’ll have to talk to him one day to see where he is on that ). I explained that I’d just been reading about some people called the Shadow People and they both knew exactly, together at the same time, that I was talking about the ones who passed in front of the house. We’d never discussed them before. Well, a few years later when Christian was very ill the Shadow People started to come into the house. I was aware of them passing in the corridor leading to the bedrooms. I think that they could sense that there was a problem.

They haven’t been around for a while and I have two explanations for that. First the gardens around here have started to be pulled up and new houses built. It is quiet, but not the same as before. The other reason was that one night I’d gone to bed and Rob stayed up late working on the computer. He woke me up in a panic as he was sure that someone had walked down the corridor, he thought it was me. I just told him not to worry about it as it was probably a Shadow Person (then I had to explain who they were). Perhaps they went away because his reaction frightened them, or perhaps they were worried that they had frightened him. I do miss them.

Out in the open

For a couple of days this week I was on what you could call an emotional roller coaster; I had two conversations, one with Olivier, my youngest son and one with Rob, my husband. We talked about a friend of Rob’s who used to come to stay with his family when all of the children were small. I really got on well with his wife, we married within days of each other and our birthdays are one after the other. Olivier suddenly remembered being in the kitchen with Rob’s friend when he was quite small and the friend saying to Olivier ‘remember that’s our secret’ he spoke in English which made the words even more secret(e)y as far as Olivier was concerned. Olivier doesn’t think that anything happened that shouldn’t have. Two days later Rob and I were talking about the same person and Rob suddenly said that he wondered if this person had ever done anything to the boys. I felt physically sick when he said that because he didn’t know what Olivier had told me. We discussed the probability calmly and decided probably not (I used to be driven round the bend by these visits – nine of us in a small bungalow, so there wasn’t much chance of anyone getting to be on their own ).

Dom came into the kitchen yesterday evening as I was telling Olivier what his father had said.; Silence (psychologists and psychiatrists always do that silence bit). Then she said that she thought probably nothing had happened as Olivier seemed fine to her, then Rob came and joined in, so we talked it through together as a family. We’ve decided to forget about it

Twice recently we’ve had good family moments which I really treasure. Olivier and Dom seem to be getting along fine at the moment. It would be lovely to have Christian with us too, of course. Dom will be moving into her tiny apartment in September and it will be years before we’re all together again.