August 2009
Well, a year and a month have passed since we descended on Sete, and we are still here to tell the tale...
The Good...
- Well, top of the charts (again) is the weather. Sorry to rub it in (most of the recipients of this email are in the UK) but the weather is unbelievably fantastic. Sete, the legendary place of wind, has experienced less than a handful of windy days since June. We were in the UK for 3 weeks at the end of June/beginning of July and missed some 'too hot' weather, but for the rest of the summer the temperature was a sizzling holiday 28 - 32 degrees. Ideal for dashing off to the beach or just staying in the cool of the shade under the trees in the garden. And September has been PERFECT. Every day (except one!) has seen clear blue sky and temperatures ranging between 23 and 26 degrees. Just amazing. (In fact, we are so confident of this phenomenon of blue skies/warm weather etc recurring next year that we have booked a holiday in the Lake District for August 2010 to make sure we get some good old English rain.) No Autumn storms yet which we would have expected so I'm wondering what's around the corner.
- The Mediterranean aroma of summer has been dreamy, and provided a heady melange of the smell of dry sweet earth, grasses and fragrant herbs. The geckos came and sat on on our windows at night; the lizards scampered between crevices in rocks to avoid the mid-day sun and the seagulls kept up their cries. Fair enough, we had mosquitoes too so it's not all good... The ants suffered. if they dared come in the house they were sprayed into oblivion and those in the garden were a source of entertainment for Imo and Mooshi. (Did you know that an ant can drag a 1cm square piece of popadom from under the table to its hole in the earth in less than 5 minutes?)
- Eating al fresco is one of the
best bits of our life here. Since early July when we returned from our
UK trip we have had only one meal inside, lunch a week ago as it rained
a bit (and was then sunny again 10 mins later). Other than that,
breakfast, lunch and supper are all enjoyed outside. Splendid.
- The beach has been our playground for the summer and, although not the most picturesque in the South of France, has, with it's shallow clear waters, enabled Imo to learn to swim (hurrah - no armbands!) and Mooshi to enjoy paddling.
- Having opened our doors to all and sundry we are finding our guest
experiences really great. Some people have even visited twice - but
Granny and Grandpa win the the prize for visiting 3 times! We've had
guests from as far away as China (Hi brother Tom) and California (Nia
and Simon you were great). Our youngest 'unaccompanied' guest was the
fabbo Katie from Cambridge (Mermaid man is dreaming about you now I
expect), and our largest party of guests (4) were the Pfiffer-Koops
from Germany. The prize for the most short-notice-but-very-welcome
guest goes to Ian our next door neighbour from Cambridge who phoned one
morning to say that he was in Montpellier, and could he visit in the
afternoon, which he duly did, and turned it into an overnight stay.
Lest the unmentioned feel left out, we'd also like to thank Lisa for
coming (yes, she does get the prize for being the oldest - and wisest?
- guest....) HUGE Imo and lovely little Noah, and last, but not least,
the effervescent Naughty-Nautical Nick. (Why, why, why oh why didn't
you bring the purple sprouting with you?)
- Imogen tells me that she now thinks and dreams in French as well as English. Wow. Easy for a 5 year old I know, but still admirable. 'Hats off' I say.
- Imo started her second year at school (the equivalent to Year 2 in the UK) on the 3rd September. She had been given a long list of things to have ready prepared for La Rentree, including a very prescriptive list of things such as: a blue biro, a green biro, a pencil sharpener (fine so far), a slate - yes - for practising their curly writing on! and a match box - now I know that the French smoke a lot but to teach them how to fumer at school does seem a little over the top. She was very happy to go back to school, and is now in the youngest class of the big school as opposed to being in the oldest class of the small school.
- The tennis club
continues to be the hub of our social life. I play several times a week
and try to hit with Imo once a week. Last week she was (thank god or
else no-one would believe me) witnessed doing a rally with me of 201!!!
Mooshi now has her own racquet and is trying to keep up, but isn't
quite there yet. Steve is 'one of fellas' and joins in all the
tournaments, gigs etc.
- Recently I have been offered, and accepted, the position of ('a', not 'the') tennis coach at our club. Fantastic. I am now the bread winner for our family. This isn't quite as grand as it seems when you realise that it is only for one hour a week (as we still haven't got Mooshi a place in a creche) and is paid a measely 8 Euros an hour. Still, my foot is in the door, and if I can find childcare for Mooshi at less than 8 Euros an hour, then there'll be much more work available for me.
- Snippets of holiday.
Two of our friends (well, they were
friends) have asked us: does it feel like
you are on perpetual holiday? Having just washed the floors, cleaned
the loos and ironed (all whilst providing a Mary Poppins childcare
service for Imo and Mooshi) I felt a bit indignant, so I spent a few
moments thinking about the truthful answer to the question. And the
answer is:
snippets of holiday. Over the last few months we've done about 3
or 4 things a week where it is just like being on holiday. Going to
the beach, going to the centre of Sete to the beer festival etc.
So, instead of having to book planes and trains etc we just have lots
of 'holiday moments' - which is fantastic, as we are not living out of
rucksacks (although we did for 10 weeks over the summer because of the
builders but that is another story) but it
does mean that the 'drudgery' of everyday life continues. (All
volunteers for cleaning, childcare, cooking, taxi-service, house
maintenance gratefully accepted.)
The Bad...
- One
of the reasons for coming to Sete was that it didn't appear to be an
ex-pat English enclave. In fact, we still haven't found any other
English people here. There is a lovely Swedish couple up the road from us who
speak English, and we've heard rumours of a
Dutch-Vietnamese couple with young children, but we haven't seen them
yet (their common language is English apparently). So, what's bad about this? Lack of English tourists! For the previous several months I had been acting out a role play, as follows:
Scene: 'Smug Me' (Tessa) on beach with Imo and Mooshi, surrounded by holiday-makers
English Tourist: Oh, isn't it great here, lovely weather and so many things to see and do
Smug Me: Yeah, it's really good.
English Tourist: When are you off home?
Smug Me: Oh, about half six.
English tourist: No, I mean, when do you go back to England?
Smug Me: Er, we don't - we live here!
English tourist utters jealousy.......
But, 'Smug 'Me' didn't get a chance to star in this cameo role as we didn't hear/see another English person here all summer! Given that our local beach is heaving in the summer this tells you exactly how French this area is. Maybe I heard a couple of German voices, but 99% + are French. So it really is a case of French by total immersion.
- My French is hobbling along slowly. Some days I'm totally flawed and just can't get the words out, and others it flows more easily without too much effort. Just today I walked into the tennis club club house and said 'merci' instead of 'Bonjour'. Marie, the Manager, looked at me and said (in French of course) 'why did you say 'Merci'?' I just shrugged my shoulders and said 'Fatigue!'
- Builders and building work. This I have included in the 'bad' section of this missive but it really fits into all 3 places - good, bad and ugly. The good is the fact that we now have the shell of our new kitchen, and an internal set of stairs - hurrah! Also, the builders themselves were real characters which only helped fuel my illusion that we're actually being filmed as part of a docu-drama for Channel 4 on 'families moving abroad'. There was Jose, the 'chef', short and rotund who spoke French at the speed of light; Eric (pronounced Err-reeeek) the placoiste (plasterer) and Gerard the Sparks, with the wavy black hair, the smart clothes and the oh-so-French look about him. They were French (well, actually Jose is Spanish) and true to form filled my text-book expectations: they smoked, they worked slower on hot days, they were the height of civility, they took long lunch-breaks under the shade of our orange tree and overall couldn't have provided a nicer back drop to our first French summer. Now for the bad...having builders in meant that poor Imo had to survive her school holidays with all her toys/books etc packed away. As all parts of the house were effected by building works everything was packed in boxes or wrapped in plastic to avoid the masonry dust. Only our bedroom and the bathroom were left unscathed.
- Being the hospitable souls that we are (or rather the fact that we had committed to having guests before we knew that the building works would so badly over-run), 3 of our 7 weeks of the summer holiday season were spent entertaining visitors. So, apologies now to those of you who put up with our 'Hotel du Wrapping Plastique' and somewhat camping lifestyle. That's in the 'bad' category as it maybe wasn't the best circumstances under which to see our lovely home?!
- and
the ugly bit of building...ah hem, the Project Manager for the
renovation. Sadly, she was the only English person who we have dealt
with here and she failed to deliver, broke promises and let us down.
She was fired. But luckily the builders carried on anyway. Also, the
cost is pretty ugly - 800 Euros to paint a tiny 8 foot square bedroom;
600 Euros to fix a handrail to a set of stairs etc etc. We're not a
registered charity (yet) but feel free to dip your hands into your
pockets to support the Martyn-Hayes-Swanning-Around-in-Sete Fund.
- A tail of pain (literally), and if you have recently had a baby then cross your legs and wince. The day before Mooshi's birthday we decided to take one of our mini 3 hour long holidays. We went to Capitaine Jackos in Cap D'Agde, only 25 mins away from us. It is like Aqualand but for young children. For those of you who are faint-hearted then turn away now; Mooshi wanted to go down one of the waterslides but I judged it too dangerous for her to go by herself, so I gamely volunteered to go with her sitting on my lap. The slide was maybe 10 metres long and by the bottom of the slide we had gathered a lot of pace so I decided to turn sideways at the bottom so as to avoid careering off into a crowd of people in front of us. The 'leading buttock' (if there is such a thing) spun round and continued to soar off at great speed; meanwhile the remaining buttock did just that and remained where it had landed at the bottom of the slide. ooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww If anyone had needed a reinactment of childbirth then this was it. I looked up (through the tears of pain) to see if there was a fleet of ambulances ready to take me to hospital and stitch me up but there weren't any....... Mooshi uttered her only word: 'more'. And, funnily enough I decided that I wouldn't go on that slide again. A week on from that incident I can happily report that I could walk again.
- The 8 Euros an hour I get for tennis coaching.
- which brings me nicely to my next point, that the cost of things here is pretty ugly. Everything - food, building works (nuff said), everything except wine I guess. But seeing as it still takes us 4 days to get through a bottle between us, it's hardly going to influence whether we can go or stay...
- As I
mentioned, Imo has started school again. Her teacher is very kind - to Imo, but seems to spend a lot of time shouting at the naughty boys. (The girl who sits next to Imo has put cotton wool in her ears as she doesn't like the shouting!) I have
been noticing that many people here are big shouters and screamers. I have now witnessed this quite a few times on the beach and in the playground. I've
seen newborns yelled at; very young babies dunked in cold sea
screaming; 6 months olds having their faces slapped for not stopping
crying when they are being strapped into a buggy; god knows how much
generalised slapping for breathing but the thing I've never seen before
but have now seen on 3 different occasions is young children being picked up by the back of their neck, or if the carers
(???!!!) hand is not big enough a wadge of skin from behind the ear to
lift the child off the ground. And the yelling, the endless yelling at
the children. Not a nice note to end on but then you knew it was going to be ugly.