One of the very good things that happened to my father – along with the years he spent in the navy – was meeting my mother.  Such a taciturn character (a gene that none of the women in the family inherited) and a sweet, kind man (ditto for me at least) they balanced each other perfectly.  I know sometimes his taciturnity drove my mother mad and probably her loquacity drove him mad, but until he was cruelly taken from her, their’s was a very happy marriage as neither looked for perfection in the other or made the other responsible for their own happiness.  That’s why I will be with Mr. J. until one of us kicks the bucket or he kicks me out.

*****

The boy is back from Luffbra via Newquay sporting a yellow head.

 ”It was a prank for charity.  Five of us did it.  We went to the pound shop.  Funny.  It turned out a different colour on each of us.”  The same five will shortly be visiting us here in Switzerland so if you see five sporty looking lads with orange/yellow/white heads having a larf, you know it’s Ollie’s crew.

“It’s better than a tattoo,” said Madre wisely.

*****

And yesterday Alexia’s top secret farewell party organised by the very forward thinking Ellen and her mum Sarah which took place in our garden.  The whole school year was invited to celebrate the end of their junior school years and to wish Alexia luck in London.  Twenty-one kids swam, ate and boomed away the late afternoon.  Sarah had made a photo album for Alexia and asked each child to write a message which will be perfect in London as a reminder of her friends back home.  It is Rabbit Boy’s turn to write.  He with the Rooney ears, rough edges and parents who breed rabbits for the table and eye us expats suspiciously.  His name is Mikael and as Sarah hands him the book to annotate, the whole year huddle around him.

“Bravo Mikael.  Well done Mikael, look how well you did that A.  Bien fait, tu t’es très bien concentré.”  Squeezing the letters out of this sweet country boy is a team effort and no-one gets left behind.

At the end of the summer Mikael will go down to Nyon to a special learning school.

“Did you like Mikael mummy?” asked Alexia as she drifted off to sleep.

“Very much so.  I think we should invite him again. I don’t think he gets to swim in a pool very often.” 

At the end of their junior school years here most will go up to the big secondary school in the next village over.  Some will go onto smaller private schools and some will go to schools for those with learning disabilities.  Alexia going off to her school in London is more privileged than Mikael there is no doubt, but only on a material level.    They have lived 25 metres apart,  breathed the same air, played on the same football pitch and attended the same village school.  In Switzerland everyone gets the same start and no one can say whose life will be better.  Let us hope they will both have beautiful lives but most importantly let us hope that Mikael and Alexia will always be friends.

 ”It’s the sugar,” said my friend Martha reaching into the freezer for a bottle of vodka.

“It’s the sugar in the wine that gives you the hangover.”

We are standing in her kitchen a few evenings after we both attended a very raucous affair where I, it appears, drank too much because I couldn’t function properly for a few days after.  I’m not talking about getting drunk here as there is nothing so deeply unattractive as a drunk woman, I’m just talking about having a good time and drinking a tad more than the daily recommended allowance dictated to us by the nanny state.

“How much did you drink?” she asked kindly almost masking the incredulity in her voice. 

Martha is tall and blonde and savvy .  She worked out long ago that wine gives her headaches and makes her feel lousy but spirits, in particular vodka, are her friend and can be drunk with little side effects. 

“Around three glasses of wine with the dinner.” (I didn’t like to mention the glass of champagne prior to the red wine as well, it sort of slipped my memory standing as I was next to this alpha woman).

“Did you have a headache?”  She continued

“No, just that yucky liverish feeling and no energy for two days!”

A horrified look flitters over her face.  “Were you hungry the next day?”

“Yes, famished.”

“Sugar does that,” she said shaking her head wisely.  ”Sugar and Alcohol don’t mix! The only remedy being a hot night on the dance floor. Burn baby burn!!!!”  She intoned clinking ice into her drink.

I like to drink.  I like a glass of red wine at night, even if I’m all alone.   And I like to drink when I go out socially. In other words I don’t want to give it up.  It is one of my few vices along with watching Oprah.  But alas, excessively bad-tempered and humourless in the days following a night out, are not doing much for my reputation and obviously my liver just ain’t what it used to be. 

But here’s the thing.  One:  Brits don’t abstain, it is our/my social oil.  Two: Some occasions, it has to be said, need a little buzz going just to get through them.  Ever been to a nightclub sober?  Christmas without a drink?  It is a depressing thought.

What I really need is a spare body part.  I need a new liver to strap on every time I’m out having fun, a sort of medical bum bag, a cute little Geisha Girl’s hump which can be thrown away – along with the hangover – once home.  In the meantime whilst I wait for medical science to catch up,  if you see a middle-aged woman flinging herself around a dance floor at a party don’t worry, you know it’s only me, burning baby burning!!!

I love Léa.  She is a reality star in the making.  Her mum Nathalie is a kind, sweet natured woman from the Valley doubling up as Maître D’ of the auberge.  Dad is the French chef in the kitchen full of noise and laughter and ascerbic wit barely, but just,remaining on the side of politesse.  Léa has a good deal of her father in her. 

She is a great raconteur and many of her stories are no doubt apocryphal but only a miser would point that out to a ten year old.  My favourites involve her two giant rabbits Mommy G.  and Marshmallow -  which she pronounces Mashmalloooooowwww.  These two enormous rabbits, about twice the size of a domestic cat, are allowed to roam freely in their appartément above the auberge; a chaotic tumble of rooms which she shares with her morose brother and nice older sister.  This particular Friday she tells us the story of the time Mommy G., or it may have been Marshmallow she wasn’t quite sure, decided to wander downstairs into the restaurant and caused mayhem amongst the diners.

Cue Léa’s impersonation of an English woman, which entails lowering her voice but raising her nose, rushing into the kitchen.

“EST Il NORMAL monseigneur, ZAT ZER IZ ZE RABBIT IN THE RESTORRRANNNTT????!!!!”

(This leads Léa’s mind to jump to Gad Elmaleh the Moroccan-French stand up comedian who is a personal hero of her’s and rare is a Friday night without his name mentionned).

“Il va en Angleterre et tout ce qu’ il sait dire c’est quelques phrases d’anglais appris à l’école. (the first time Gad goes to England with his school boy English all he can remember to say is)

Ver iz Brian?”

“Where,” I say correcting her, the English teacher in me unable to resist.

“Verrrre.” she replies only slightly put out.   ”Ver iz Brian?  Brian iz in the kitchen.  Ver iz Jenny? (Brian’s sister)  Jenny is in the Bathrooooooommmmmm.  Et il rencontre une fille qui s’appelle Jenny (He meets a girl called Jenny in England and all he can say to her is).  Vot  are you doing here?  GET BACK IN ZE BATHROOOOOOMM.  Ahhahahahahaha.   C’était trop marrante.”

She is still talking when we pull into the car park of the auberge.

“Au revoir Léa,” I say.”  “Ah oui.  On est là,” she says disappointedly.  “Alors bon weekend les filles.”

I drive up to the top of the village to drop Courtney and then back home in complete silence.

My preparations to depart at the end of the coming summer are many fold.  I am reading London by Edward Rutherfurd – a massive tome so I read in segments of four pages a day – and a charming little book entitled  I Never Knew That About London!  Do you know why in England they drive on the left? 

“The British custom of keeping to the left had developed from jousting when competitors needed to keep their javelin or sword hand free to meet the oncoming horseman.  As most people were right-handed this meant passing each other on the left.  The Continental custom of driving on the right was introduced ty the Emperor Napoleon, who was left handed.  Since it was he who established the first road system across most of Europe, right-hand drive was adopted on the Continent.”

Another thing I have taken to doing is looking out of the window during this gorgeous spring and thinking, I won’t see those two shades of lilac offset against Monsieur Extermann’s glycine against the backdrop of the 1830s church tower next year.  Nostalgia already before I have even left.  Is this not human nature? At least it is my nature.   Always thinking about what we don’t/can’t have.  But I’m lucky as this house will still be ours and I can always come back for my lilac fix next year, all being well.

The response to our move has been greatly supported in general by our friends and family although I have had some strange reactions ranging from the subtle “How will Mr. Jules survive under the drizzle of London?”  (er…the same way he survives under the drizzle of Geneva?) to the more outlandish “London men are dirty, they never change their suits.”  (Real men don’t give a toss about these things). 

Tonight we will drive up to Mont Pelerin and have dinner with some old friends of ours over from Dubai.  Fed-up with the glitzy Emirate they had applied to emigrate to Vancouver and now have cold feet and are thinking of moving here with their young family.  They are Lebanese, educated and generous.  Some of my best memories of the Dubai  days are the evenings spent with them and now just as we prepare to leave they think of coming here…It is as if there is a conspiracy to hold me back; the  lilac conspiring to be the deepest most vibrant purple colour and new friends arriving.  But, I tell myself, new friends await us and the lilac will be replaced by bluebells in the woods near  my mother’s house. 

The grass will not be greener, it will be a completely different colour and I’ll be keeping my sword hand free to meet the oncoming horseman.

Easter Holidays. I am standing outside my front door saying goodbye to Marlyse our family friend, neighbour and loyal (unpaid) dog walker. Marlyse is in her late seventies and needs the exercise and Molly, the same age in dog years, appreciates the slow steady pace. I am still in my yoga clothes with greasy hair. Along comes Inger my friend and neighbour from the top of the village looking all shiny and glamorous in her work clothes walking Rosie her dog – a slightly younger and more sprightlier version of Molly. Today Inger organised a trade conference for global delegates whilst I took a yoga class with my girls, hiked in the woods and made cheesecake with Lexi for her birthday tomorrow. We are both mothers of three children. We both choose to do what we are doing. Inger battles the stress of not always being there and crazy weekends catching up and I battle the undervalued status of a stay at home mum and when the writing commissions are scarce, that nagging feeling of underachieving.  Neither of us has got it wrong.

This is the second birthday cake.  The first, a Victoria Sponge filled with raspberry jam and cream and covered in something unspeakable from the temple of E numbers, the American shop down by the lake, was made for the cowgirl sleep-over party held on Saturday night – burgers, line dancing and the Horse Whisperer.  The cheesecake is for tomorrow her actual birthday (Lexi milks everything she can out of any situation).

Did you know that there are no calories in birthday cake and that it is incredibly bad luck to refuse a slice?   Once when Ollie was around 12 we took him to dinner and bumped into some friends who ended up eating with us. These friends are gourmets and love nothing more than a trip to Alba during truffle season. Everything was going beautifully until Ollie’s birthday cake arrived – a Mille Feuille which I had admittedly picked up at the supermarket earlier as it is too laborious to make.  It didn’t look amazing but it had candles on it and he loved it and when he, in a very grown up manner, offered our friends a slice and they said,

 ”Non, merci”

I could have walloped them. Yes, they are empty calories, yes it is a crap cake from a supermarket and it will take a week to digest but it’s his birthday for Pete’s sake.  I like this couple, they are good friends but that memory always plays in my mind whenever I think of them.

So remember the eleventh commandment: Thou Shalt Always Eat Birthday Cake.