Hello!

I haven’t written for a long time and I have so much to report! Richard will therefore hate this entry! 😉

Since my last post in mid-August, summer has ended, my parents have come and a month later they were gone, we have been on three more mini-holidays in France and we have had some really special visits from our Melbournian friends and most recently a visit from Richard’s mum.

My mum and dad were here for a month and Richard and I had spent hours planning for their trip so that they could experience parts of Paris and France that they had not yet seen during their previous French escapades. Without mentioning each outing- I’d be typing for ages- our adventures took us to the old city of Lyon and also back to the Normandy coast to Trouville. It was a great time, as it always is when Dun is in the house! A lowlight for mum was probably getting stuck in our tiny lift with Kitty for about 45 minutes- but, thanks to Bessie and Solomon who read books to them loudly from the stairwell, they were distracted and stayed calm. We all tried patiently to teach mum and dad how to play Contract Rummy which made for lots of laughs (nervous ones from me! Have my parents lost some brain function?) and late nights. The two months of summer holidays finally came to an end and the kids returned to school and a few days later, mum and dad returned to Melbourne.

Bessie’s Camberwell Primary School classmate and very dear friend Imogen came to Paris for a few days with her super mum Lou in early September. They accompanied me during school pick-up and Bessie and Kitty took Imogen on a little school tour (it’s ultra rare for outsiders to be let inside the doors!). We all headed to the bibliothèque park for a play and then back home for some burgers and a video presentation on our fat cat “The Ellanator” as Imogen calls her (she has been minding Ella while we are here). Little Imogen was unbelievably energetic considering she had just travelled half way around the earth, so we went to get ice-cream after dinner and then said our goodbyes. It was a delightful afternoon and evening.

In mid-September, the Braithwaite family from CPS came over for a casual dinner. Again, what absolute troopers they all were, having just arrived from Melbourne the day before and then spending the whole day at Versailles but still making the effort to visit us in the evening! They travel with the tenacity of businessmen on an overseas conference- credit to them all! Our kids loved having Sophia over for a play and Solomon caught up on all the latest news from Grade 3 back at home.

My dear friend Jane (Mothers’ group, Richmond 2008) was also in Paris in mid September, with her two sons Leo and Felix and her husband Paul. They came over to our place for Sunday lunch and then we headed out to the Musée des Arts et Métiers and walked through the stunning building, this time admiring all sorts of inventions, especially those in the Transport collection. After a play on the grass (a pleasant surprise!) outside the museum and being told off for standing too close to a statue (no surprise there), we had a drink in a nearby cafe and then went our separate ways. A few days later, we couldn’t resist another opportunity to have some more fun together, so we had dinner here and then finished the night with some Magnums in the local park, all the while trying (and failing) to avoid kicking the ball into poo on the ground.

Late September saw more of our Melbourne mates sneaking in a visit to Europe over the spring school holidays. Richard’s mentor and friend Richard Peppard started his French adventure in Paris, accompanied by his wife Lisa, daughter Sophie and Sophie’s friend Harriett. They came over for Sunday lunch and then we went on a stroll to Les Halles, stopping to read the signs and check our knowledge of French vocabulary and grammar. Richard Peppard trumped each one of us every time as we knew he would. After ice-creams, we left them to continue on their journey and made plans to meet up again during the following week in the south of France.

Late in September, the Bourke family gave up an evening in Paris to join us in our apartment for a not-so-French dinner. What a pleasure it was to share our time with this magnificent family! Harvey is one of Solomon’s friends from school and both Harvey and his brother Hayden are fine young men with beautiful kind hearts like their mum Leisa and their dad Matt. I forgot to take a single picture but I shall fondly remember this night that ended way too quickly.

Instead of taking the kids to school during the last week of September, we took them to the south of France. Nobody complained, except perhaps Solomon’s teacher who wrote me a note explaining that ‘going on a holiday’ is not a valid excuse to take a child out of school and that she had officially noted ‘family problems’ in the school records. We flew south to Nice and then caught a train to our first stop, Antibes. It is a really pretty resort town on the French Riviera and we stayed in the heart of the old town down a tiny laneway. There was a cool little restaurant literally right outside our door which meant we could have an early dinner and wake up early enough to watch Richmond win the AFL grand final. Though our apartment was really tiny, we loved living on the ground floor and the kids were able to go outside and play in the laneway whenever they liked which is a foreign concept for us here in Paris.

After two nights in Antibes, we hired a car and drove inland and up, up, up to Bargemon which is nestled in olive groves 500m above sea level. We stayed with the Peppards in a huge stunning house built on a massive estate next to the one the Beckhams own. “I didn’t realise I was this rich!” was Richard Peppard’s first comment about the accommodation. It was certainly an unforgettable place filled with art and tastefully designed. We Blazés spent 100% of our time on the property enjoying all it had to offer, apart from the time Richard literally drove for hours to find somewhere, anywhere, that sold food- it was a Monday and most shops in the neighbouring towns were closed. Our kids played hide and seek with the “big girls” knowing well that they risked getting completely lost within the house. I will add lots of pictures of our time in Bargemon because I don’t have enough vocabulary to explain how breathtaking it was. Our nights were spent with Lisa and Richard Peppard drinking wine and talking until late as we sat by a fireplace big enough to burn a whole forest at once. It was a very special holiday.

We returned to Paris, and the following day Solomon moved into his sisters’ room, happily offering his bed to Richard’s mum, nanna Carmen. Though the kids were at school for much of Carmen’s stay and Richard was at work, we still managed to show her some of the highlights of Paris and also gave her a peek into our everyday lives here. We helped Carmen find her way to Monet’s garden in Giverny which she thoroughly enjoyed and she managed to eventually get back to the apartment in one piece! Carmen was our final guest and so now it’s back to the five of us for the rest of our time in Paris.

Last week, we caught up with the Gabriels family from CPS who were at the tail end of their European holiday. After I insulted chef Fred by suggesting that we all grab a hotdog for lunch (I maintain that Fred doesn’t know how good they are), we ended up meeting in the local park and the kids had a play together before the Gabriels went sightseeing and my kids headed back to the apartment for their piano lessons. I almost didn’t make it to the park in time to meet them because I had spent the entire morning searching for Richard’s phone which ‘bounced’ out of his bike basket on his way to work. I couldn’t locate the damn thing and I gave up after a few hours, but Richard had success and ended up finding it at the bottom of a rubbish bin that he had to dig through to retrieve it.  It was smashed beyond repair and stank of cigarettes but at least he didn’t lose it, unlike his wallet which has been missing now for weeks. [Can you hear my tone of frustration?]

In other news, the kids are really enjoying school (maybe partly because they have just 6 weeks left?). They all love their teachers and they walk in and out of the school doors with smiles on their faces most days. Gold! Bessie and Kitty look forward to swimming class every Friday (Kitty can even jump into the pool now) and they talk about the fun and dramas they have with their friends and classmates. Even Solomon seems to have made some friends (he vowed not to make any when he first arrived as it seemed pointless to him).

Richard is hard at work following a relaxing summer break when he spent most of his work time on educational reading and research. He has recently been to Grenoble for a training session in Deep Brain Stimulation which seems to have opened up many other opportunities for some more involvement in DBS around France and possibly also London. He is preparing a couple of presentations on Parkinson’s Kinetigraphs to be delivered to other hospitals around France in the coming months.

As for me, I am enjoying my days in Paris and I’m spending more time with my French friends (mainly mums from school). I’m often invited to have coffee or lunch during the day with friends and ‘play dates’ with other families and their kids on weekends. I am desperate to find more time for some personal studies which will happen hopefully in a couple of weeks once the kids are back at school. In the meantime I am planning some day trips for the family out of Paris and some serious sightseeing durning these school holidays. Time is ticking and we don’t have long to go.

That will do for now! I’ll post some pictures and leave you all alone!

Cindi xxxooo

 

Dinner in our apartment with a beautiful view of Lyon (mum and dad did well with the stairs)