La Belle Epoque

The fog lifts on another balmy and barmy day chez my disturbed mind.  I'm back to my usual fighting fit self I'm pleased to report having, it seems bagged another interview for a stellar organisation.  See, I think this whole job hunting malarkey is a test on endurance not skills.  I am confident in those...it's the waiting around that is fuelling the clot in my aorta.  I should know better than to doubt the power of the universe.  It will provide - it always has.  So I shall leave that whole agenda in the capable laps of the gods.

Jeez, I'll tell ya, it's amazing what a bar of chocolate and three bags of strawberry shoelaces can do to settle the mind and body.

I'm alone again.  The silverback is in Hamburg and I've been left to my own devices.  First on the 'to do' was to book a trip to Perpignan.  I was 21 last time I was there and the trip will be a very emotional one for me.  It was the last year my mum spent on this mortal coil; I was there, she was here and when I came home after a year of Cyrano de Bergerac country and picturesque spaces filled with belle epoque experiences where I was teaching English as part of my degree, it was to be the last 2 months of her life.  It was a sudden and unexpected death and as the16th year anniversary creeps ever closer - never a day I like to dwell on - it seems appropriate that this year I come full circle. 

My teaching friends and staff at the Lycee who had taken me under their wing - I was known as La Petite Lectrice to everyone, even the local boulanger - were devastated for me and united in their show of solidarity.  It is a kindness I will never forget.  After many attempts to return, as crazy as it sounds, I simply didn't find the time to visit.  I lie, I did go back once 7 years later and that was pretty intense, but I return now as a mother myself and wife.  I've come a long way since La Petite Lectrice made students fill in the gaps to the lyrics of Nirvana's Lithium.  I remember that being an immensely popular lesson.

I will get to see my mentor again who is to retire from a lifetime of giving - she is the Head of English at the French Lycee in Andorra (though I doubt she will ever really stop giving) and her mother who is 100 years old!!! 

I hope to catch up with all the eccentrics of the village:  The french literature teacher with an unhealthy obsession for Le Canigou  - the local mountain.  He talks about it as if it were a person, related to him.  Then there is the son of the school administrator whom I gave private English lessons to with one condition; everything we talked about had to revolve around the films of Kevin Costner.

There are also those I have no wish to see again: the sports teacher who it was widely believed made porn films on the side or the economics teacher with an aversion to soap and deodorant...

I think however, the thing I'm almost most looking forward to is seeing how my husband deals with the lingo - especially down south:

- Pernod? Avec de l'eau?

- Victor Who?

- Wiz water?

- PLEASE!!