Different Viewpoints

A friend, who is currently living in Dubai, posted this photo on Facebook recently

and it made me think about our experience of living here.  

My picture would look more like this:

One thing I have loved about living here is the fact that we're in a small town, where you bump into people you know in the street and the shopkeepers and bartenders recognise you and know your order and that we're within walking distance of that town and the railway station.  In a way it reminds me of growing up in Winchester:

where even today I often recognise faces as I walk down the High Street.  There's something about the community in a small town that you don't get in a large one, and that is something that I will miss.

Looking back, and forwards

People keep asking me what I'll miss about France and what I'm looking forward to about moving back to the UK. 

I'm sure that once I'm back I'll find that I miss many more things but these are the ones I can think of off the top of my head:



Coffee in L'Avenue on a Wednesday morning with the school-gate mums, where the waiter brings my coffee without me ordering it.

The Paris Walks, through which I have learned so much about the history of Paris and been to museums which I never would have visited on my own: Père Lachaise cemetary; The Basilica of St Denis - the burial place of the French Monarchy; Carnavelt - where we hardly scratched the surface, focussing on prehistoric Paris; The Musée du Moyen Age - a fascinating collection of objects dating from the Middle Ages; The Musée Cognacq-Jay - a collection of exquisite objects from the 18th Century and the Conciergerie - a 14th century building on the banks of the Seine, the first Royal Palace in Paris which was used as a prison during the French Revolution and was the place that Marie Antoinette spent the final days before her execution, to name but a few.

The Conciergerie

The Lady & The Unicorn Tapestry
from the Musée du Moyen Age

Being within walking distance of the town centre and the railway station, thus being able to go out in the evening and walk home afterwards.


The temptation of boulangeries, especially the one just across the road from the end of our alleyway which does the most wonderful croissants, pains au chocolate and pains au raisin and where A speaks the most French he ever speaks.


The long school holidays.  This may sound mad but I think that having a minimum of 2 weeks off at a time allows the children to get into a rhythm in the holidays whereas with a single week break they have to go back to school just as they've got used to being on holiday.  When we first moved here the thought of 2 whole months of summer holidays scared me, I didn't know how we'd fill them but with a combination of visitors coming here, trips back to the UK and a family holiday they passed in the flash of an eye.

Shutters - They keep out the light and intruders and keep in the heat.

Fast broadband, although I hope it won't be long until our box in HW is upgraded to fibre by BT, apparently it was forgotten when they upgraded most of them - just our luck.  We've become very reliant on the internet here for listening to the radio and catching up on TV programmes so it's a good thing that we won't need it so much for that in England.

The basement, we weren't able to use the downstairs place to its full potential because it is just bare walls and floors but it was great to have all that storage space downstairs and a 'laundry room'.

And, of course all the people we've met since we've been here who have welcomed us into their lives even though we knew we were never going to be here for ever.

So, what am I looking forward to?

Being able to phone utility providers and contractors and know that I'll be able to understand what they say.  My French is OK face to face but it's so difficult to understand people when they talk quickly on the phone.  And who knows, they might be helpful too!



More structured school hours - at the moment E and K can leave school after the last lesson of the day, which for E on one day is 10.10am and K literally only has 2 hours of school on a Wednesday whilst A finishes at 11.45 on Wednesdays.  K also comes home for lunch every day so there always seem to be children coming and going.  That said, E will be being tutored at home prior to her exams so this won't really kick in until September.

Driving without worrying that some idiot is going to throw their car in front of you from a side road, Priorité à Droite has got to be the most stupid rule ever and it isn't applied consistently, neither is it clear to the person on the left whether the side roads to their right have give-way signs on them or not.


Going to Parkrun on a Saturday morning, I've only been once but it was a great experience and I'm looking forward to being a proper member.  Also, joining the Ooh Ma, Ma! choir which has recently been set up in Basingstoke to get mums out of the house and singing; and taking part in some of the "Be Inspired" events in aid of Basingstoke NCT and organised by my lovely friend Stef. 

Other small things include living in my own house and being able to buy Cheddar in more than 250g chunks (which in our house last about a day).

And, just as I will miss the friends we've made here, I'm looking forward to coming back to a ready-made social circle and having lots of coffees and barbecues and other get-togethers with friends whom I haven't seen enough over the last two years.

Moving Matters

I can't believe I haven't posted here since September.  Life was jogging along nicely with the children all settled in one school and me enjoying more guided Paris walks and there wasn't really much to report until recently.


On Christmas Eve the tenants in our house in the UK gave in their notice and we were faced with the option of leaving the house empty for 4 months, finding new tenants who would have a minimum 6 month lease period or moving back now.  Neither of the first two options was great, leaving the house empty for 4 months would have left us out of pocket, with no rent to cover the mortgage, and finding new tenants for 6 months would have meant that we wouldn't be able to move back before the beginning of the new school year.


This, coupled with the fact that Paul's job has changed so that he's travelling a lot more and working in France a lot less, pushed us towards deciding to move back to the UK earlier than planned.


Luckily we have found schools with places for the boys and E. will only have 2 months to go before her exams so we're going to get her tutors - some one-2-one tuition won't do her any harm at all.


So we're all set to move back at the beginning of March, which is only a month away!  Don't panic Mr Mainwaring, don't panic.

School Matters

After 2 months of holidays for the boys, and more than that for Emily, the children went back to school at the beginning of September.  They are, for the first time ever, all in the same school now - which does make life a lot easier for me, not least because I leave for the afternoon pick-up a full hour later than I did last year.

This week the round of class orientation meetings began with Alex's class.  His year is split into two classes for French and three for English, all children follow the French curriculum for French and maths and are split by ability for English into the 'anglophone' class (which is basically children whose English is better than their French, even if their mother-tongue is another language), the bilingual class and the francophone class.

Alex is, obviously, in the anglophone class and has 5 hours of English a week, with what would have been called 'topic' at our school in England (history, geography etc.) in French, the theory being that they need to do more in French because they're not so strong in it.  So we met, as a group, with the English teacher - the class is made up of 13 children, some of whom have English as their first language, some who speak another language at home but whose English is better than their French and some who are French but have been at school overseas in English speaking schools.  

The teacher outlined what they'll be doing this year, which is "The Big Reading Year".  I'm pleased that they will be having spelling lessons every week and that they will be learning grammar but she stressed the difficulty with trying to teach them reading, writing, spelling and grammar in only 5 hours a week and the problems they may have with spelling when they're also learning to spell in French.

Next we went to see the French teacher.  You'd have thought that the children would be similarly split into groups for French (those who speak French as their first language, the bilingual children and the ones who really don't speak any French) - but no!  In France private schools can keep their fees low because the state will pay the teachers' salaries if the school follows the French national curriculum, so all the children follow the same programme for French and maths as children in any other French school, so they have 8 hours a week of French literacy and 5 of maths, in French.  Last year Alex's teacher had the attitude that he needed total immersion in order to learn French and limited the amount she would explain to him to the bare minimum, this year his teacher has more children in the class who don't speak any French and seems to be more open to translating things for them so they at least understand what's going on in class, it remains to be seen whether this will encourage Alex to speak in French as he's still very reluctant.

Both the English and the French teachers impressed on us how important it was for the parents to be involved in helping the children at home - English teacher "because we only have 5 hours a week", French Teacher "because we lose 5 hours a week to English".  We get home at about 5pm every day except Weds and Alex has 15-20 mins of French/Maths homework a night and are expected to do 10-15 mins of English reading a night plus learning spellings and finishing any sheets they haven't completed in class for English and his French teacher was talking about getting more reading books from the library, oh for the days of St Marks and no homework!

I came away from the meeting worrying that Alex was never going to learn to read, write or spell in either language and thinking that if we move back to England he'll be horribly behind, especially as he is currently in the year below that which he'd be in in England.  

Then I read this article by Clifford Levy, a New York Times journalist who put his children into a school in Moscow where only Russian was spoken.  The opening couple of lines:

"The phone rang, and my stomach clenched when I heard her voice. “Daddy? I want to go home,” said my 8-year-old daughter, Arden."

brought back to me my children's first day at Ermitage when Emily and Kieran arrived on the doorstep at lunchtime vowing never to go back and served to remind me how far they have come in the last 18 months, even though we ended up putting both of them into the anglophone system, and how far Alex has come, surely he'll get there with French eventually....

The Great Lego sort-out

There's rather a lot of Lego in this house, every time you open a drawer or look in a box you find some bits, not to mention all the completed sets which need to be stored somewhere.  This was the trawl, earlier in the year, from some boxes which "definitely had no Lego in them":

So, in the summer holidays I decided it was time for the "Great Lego Sort Out".  

Down came the first box (of 3) 

Which we proceded to tip onto the floor:

and sorted into colours:

The first box sorted and boxed:

and a day or so later we had sorted every piece of Lego I could find:

 The next challenge was to find somewhere to house all the boxes, so I lugged one of our faithful wooden units up from the basement to its new home on the landing (and, yes I do need to take it apart again and fix the middle shelf):

Phase two will consist of sorting the bricks into shapes within colours but I need to find some suitable storage first.  These from Lakeland would be perfect but they're currently out of stock, I love the fact that you can see what's in them without opening them.

One of the great advantages of having sorted all the Lego is that the boys started to rebuild some of the sets which had lain in pieces for ages.  We had kept most of the instruction booklets (over 60 in total) which I have also sorted into themes, and any missing ones are available from the Lego website.

Here is a selection of the fruits of their labours:

More photos to follow.....

Lovely weekend with friends

The draft of this post has been sitting, unfinished in my drafts folder since April!  Finally, here is the finished version.


In April we had a visit from the McIntyre family, friends that we have known since Kieran and Issy were babies.  They arrived on Friday afternoon after having spent a week in Belgium and we welcomed them with a traditional Byrne BBQ.

We were very lucky with the weather and Saturday dawned bright and clear so the boys and I set off into Paris with our guests.  The boys are getting a little bored of sitting on the BatoBus but it is a great way to see Paris if you only have a short amount of time.

Evie wanted to see the Eiffel Tower because she'd been reading Madeline, so we took the Metro to Trocadero and walked down the steps and across the bridge, stopping on the way for photos.

We had lunch at LouLou' Friendly Diner and again the service and the food were good and the adults enjoyed a glass of wine while the children ate their burgers (note the very French ketchup!)

After lunch we went over to the Pompidou centre to watch the street performers and after a "where's Evie" moment:

we all headed back to Maisons Laffitte, where the children had a great time sleeping in Philippa & Stuart's tent - I think this could be the way to go for small visitors over the summer!

A spring day in Amiens

On his way back from England at the beginning of March, Paul's car broke down on the A16, luckily he managed to limp to the services so he wasn't stuck on the hard shoulder waiting for the pick-up truck.  The car ended up in a garage in Amiens, so the following weekend we had a day out there before picking up the car.

We started with lunch by the canal sitting outside one of the restaurants in the picture above.  It was a beautiful day and it was lovely to sit, looking across the canal towards the cathedral, perched on the top of the hill and eat in the sun, feeling that Spring might actually be here at last. 

After lunch we walked up through the town, past the cathedral and other interesting architecture

The last house above was covered with carvings:

Our walk took us to Jules Verne's House, with its distinctive tower, which was fascinating, an amazing house full of artefacts related to his life and work, even the boys, who aren't big on museums, loved it.

Unfortunately we weren't allowed to take photos inside and there weren't any postcards but there are some good photos on this blog.

We walked back and took a look round the cathedral, which has a memorial to the British soldiers killed on the Somme.

All in all a lovely day out, and one that we wouldn't have done if the car hadn't broken down, so some good came out of it.