September 2011
WARNING: Steve advises that those of jealous disposition should not read on (especially those who feel that perhaps the summer in the UK has been less than optimal this year).
We have been here 3 years now. Hard to believe that 3 years ago we packed up our Cambridge house and emigrated! Imo has forgotten most of her Cambridge life, and Mooshi (being exactly one year old when we moved here) never had any awareness of her existence in Cambridge anyway.
Mooshi has lived in Sète for three-quarters of her life, and Imo getting on for half her life. They are becoming French girls.
Several years ago an ex-pat told us that at the end of three years we would know if we wanted to stay or leave. It was, she reckoned, the point at which you reach either a wall, and just have to turn back, or an embrace for the French lifestyle you have acquired. Seeing as I’m sitting here typing this watching the lights twinkling across the Med, with the window pushed far back letting in the warm night air (26 degrees!), and seeing as yesterday after school we just popped down to the beach for some snorkelling in the extraordinarily clear sea… hhmmmmm … things are not so bad.
Steve recently emailed me a link (this is how we communicate – via laptop in the evenings – the modern version of Derby & Joan) for someone’s blog. It is about a family (also with 2 young girls) who moved from Colorado to Toulouse a few months ago. It is very funny reading it as the blogger (the mummy) is making exactly the same observations that I did when we first arrived, for example:
- Opening hours! We have now accepted and mastered the skill of turning up to shops on time. Even large shops (like the huge sports store where we get our racquets re-strung) shut for 2 hours for lunch. We now know that no-one in any business or council department will answer the phone between 11.55am and 2 or even 2.30pm.
- Dog poo; lots and lots of dog poo on the pavements.
- Mothers of small babies, leaning over into the pushchair, fag in mouth/hand.
Anyway (quand même), these and many more are now parts of our everyday life which make up the whole of our French experience.
We remain, to my knowledge, the only English family living in Sète, although we are aware of a handful of other Anglophone ex-pats here. I saw a meeting for Anglophone Sète residents advertised in a local paper; they were planning a walk around a nearby look-out point. Imo and I planned to dress-up as spies and use binoculars to check out our ‘competition’. Unfortunately our plans were thwarted as a few days before Imo badly sprained her ankle, and hobbling on crutches across rocky ground in a furtive manner would not have been easy.
Yesterday Steve had a funny turn and bought a loaf of sliced bread in a plastic bag to be toasted in his newly acquired toaster. And this morning I caught him at breakfast eating square toast, with butter, marmite and Tiptree Marmalade from England, whilst listening to Radio 4. So I guess we can’t say that we have fully embraced the French lifestyle.
Our social lives still revolve very much around the school gates and the tennis club. We both play tennis about 4 times a week, and I’ve started playing in the teams. Until I’ve earned some brownie points though and got my real rating I am playing as non-classement (no ranking) so have had some easy matches – phew. Less stress that way.
The Hotel du Martyn-Hayes has been open for business all year round, but fewer guests have come to see us this year (is this because once was enough I wonder? Oh god I hope not. I do realise that I get a bad case of verbal diarrhoea when English people visit us – sorry… ). But, we have still had enough visitors to keep us busy and to keep the girls entertained.
Evolution of the house and garden… I had a decorating blitz over the last year and decorated four rooms, so now the house is largely finished save for those areas which we are leaving as they are as we don’t know what to do with them. The garden is still a great dust bowl (and a mudbath when it rains), but plans are afoot, and even the tiles for 2 terraces have been purchased. I’m beginning to feel hopeful.
Mooshi completed her first year at school in July, and her report said that she was a serious and attentive student!!! (By the way, if you ask her in French what her name is she says Lucia, and if you ask her in English she says Mooshi.) We’re not really very sure about what went on in school but she seemed to have enjoyed it and has now started her second year – Moyenne Section – equivalent to UK reception class. The class has 28 pupils so is larger than last year, and I don’t envy the teacher. Mooshi goes two mornings and two full days. There is still no Wednesday school, as this is the day for doing things like music, dance sport etc. Steve, bless him, he deserves a medal for this, got up at 4.30am last week to queue for places for Imo and Mooshi to have swimming lessons, so they now both go on Wednesday mornings.
Imo, unbelievably, is starting her 4th year in the French school system, entering CE2 (equivalent to UK year 4). Once again she is in a split-level class, where half the pupils are her year and the other half are CM1 (year 5). She has the only male teacher in the school, who is the husband of the absolutely amazing teacher she had in her first year. (Imo has now retired – her word – from dance and is doing badminton on Wednesdays, where the daughter of said teachers is one of the helpers, so the entire family has/is teaching Imo.) I helped out at their school swimming lesson the other day so got to see all Imo’s classmates. They all wanted to know was she really English? Did she really speak English in her house? My other observation was that Imo is the smallest in the class, plus she is the youngest, and of course, because she is the youngest out of a class of 2 years/levels, there is a difference of 2 whole years between her and the oldest pupils. So, I’m hoping that these things don’t make her a target for teasing.
In 10 days Imo goes off to the Alps for her third school holiday. This one sounds more adventurous than the others and they go for some long hikes, including one where they stay overnight somewhere else before returning the next day. Steve went to the beginning of term open evening and thinks (we never fully understand, only gauge) that they were told that this year the main theme for the class’s study is energy, and that the sporting activities this year will be swimming, cycling and sailing.
So, both girls are happily back at school, although this is the time to mention that on the first, yes FIRST, day of school, I was busy out and about with Mooshi so Steve said he would pick Imo up. I got home with Mooshi at 5.15pm, at which point Steve threw open the study doors and yelled (well, I can’t say what he yelled) … but it amounted to ‘oh gosh, silly me, I have forgotten to pick up Imo’. So I grabbed my bike, and went tearing down the road, bumped down the steps, b b b boom, skidded along the gravel path and arrived to find Imo playing in the playground, totally unperturbed by the lack of daddy come to pick her up. (Steve’s excuse was that the naughty computer he had been sitting in front of had wiped his brain clear of common sense and had prevented him from using the powers required to remember the time.)
Les Vacances sont passées très, très bien. C’était génial! We had 10 days here in July with glorious weather, music festivals and general good vibes; and then we went to the UK for some, er, for a change. First we landed on Uncle Nick’s in Hemel Hempstead. (Sorry Nick, I don’t know where your remote control is, but how can you blame my poor little innocent Mooshi?*) I bought something from a shop in Hemel Hempstead and the shop assistant said that I could bring it back if it was the wrong size. I said I wouldn’t do that as I didn’t live in Hemel Hempstead – I was just there on holiday. Her jaw dropped, but it almost reverted to normal when I said I was going to Cornwall the next day – only to drop again when I said I lived in the South of France. And on to Cornwall we went, complete with lashings of rain and swishing of windscreen wipers. We’d rented a house with my family so there were a lot of us to look out at the stunning view of the beach, surf, wind, rain, and people shivering in their winter clothes. To be fair, we did have 1.5 sunny days, and Imo loved the surf. Back from Cornwall to Lee on Solent, for another inclement week (15 degrees? Is that an English summer?), although I was greatly cheered by the fact that Imo and I both got our hair cut for the grand total of £21 – it would have been at least £55 over here.
Arriving back in Sète was like entering a luxurious bath after 3 weeks of never quite being warm enough. Aaahhhhhhh, bliss. And so the summer continued. We had lazy mornings and late breakfasts. All meals al fresco. Beach in the afternoon. And long suppers in balmy temperatures, the girls having been put on French holiday time which is long lie-ins, and late to bed. The sun shone; the circardas chirped; the figs burst, pregnant, from the trees. The fans whirred at night, and the mosquito nets fluttered in the breeze.
Language (well, the French language) continues to be a barrier to me becoming a career-crazed high-earner. The general consensus is that my French has improved quite rapidly recently; and, better than that, that my accent is better than Steve’s. I fear that I am learning a very southern French accent though, akin to picking up a Birmingham accent if in the UK (ie a good thing)… I have failed to come up with any get-rich-quick schemes (see Appendix 1), so am settling for being income-free and making the most of my current role as a full-time mother. I see it a bit like an overseas posting as a diplomat’s wife.
And finally, last night I read an article by an ex-BBC journalist who has lived in this area for 9 years. He describes how everything is still a bit different every day, still a bit ‘foreign’, and that is what makes it endlessly exciting. Here, here!
* PS na, na, na, nah na! Uncle Nick found his remote control, at the bottom of HIS sleeping bag. Mooshi is innocent.
Appendix 1
Income creation schemes:
1) teaching English (am rubish wiv gramer an’ speling)
2) check-out chick
3) inventor (of something fabulous and much needed worldwide) This is prompted by Steve who has recently sold a patent to a big, proper, global company. How clever is that?! Now, why didn’t I think of it first?
4) groundsman (at the tennis club)
5) tennis coach (but more than 8 euros per hour per-lease!!)