Generations

I have gone South, to a tiny village in the Corbières region where old people call me by my mum’s name, and like to tell me about the time she fell off her bike and cracked her head when she was eight. I go for walks with my uncle and aunt, we pick wild leek and thyme. The rugged land is covered in spiky bushes, vineyards and rosemary, a mad wind chases the clouds across the sky and messes up our hair. I think about the snow-melt from the Pyrenees swelling the rivers, about how perhaps one of my great grand parents walking the same paths, looked down at the river wishing it could wash away their sorrow. The church bell chimes seven, this used to be the time my cousins and I had to drop whatever adventure we were up to nearly thirty years ago, to run home in time for dinner. Five hundred kilometres away, it is my children’s bath time.

José Gonzalez – Heartbeats

Half-term

The bell rings and children come pouring out of school, the excitement is tangible: They’re on holiday! We get home, I hastily finish packing the suitcase, admire T’s new car, put the car seats in, the children are so happy they’re going on holiday. Wait, something’s wrong... I'm not coming. The car pulls out, I am ripped by pain, I want to curl up and scream. I smile and wave.

The Dandy Warhols - Mohammed

Old and new

A year and a half ago, I moved to the French Alps in the middle of a heatwave, with my son, a huge bump, and a heavy heart from leaving behind my friends of twelve years. Last night, I could no longer feel the February chill, after downing some caïpirinha with nine new friends. We sat in a disused bus, ate burgers and chips, and probably scared unsuspecting diners at the next table with some hair-raising birth stories. It was fun and good. Despite no longer having a garden to potter around, I can feel myself putting down new roots here.

To my old and new friends on both sides of the Channel, I’m so glad our paths crossed :o). Some crazy French tunes for you!

Zebda - Tomber la chemise

Mediation

Today was our first day of mediation. Mediation is basically the Zero Calorie version of a high-sugar court battle, and is meant to help you constructively deconstruct your family. How nice is that? Needless to say I had been looking forward to this almost as much as to poking my eyes out with a blunt spoon. I was mostly too choked to speak, even though I know it needs to be done. Afterwards, T and I managed to talk for a bit, which is something we hadn’t done in weeks. We were both sad, and somehow that felt good.

Texas - The saint

Ties

To me, the bond between us was one of those extra strong, dynamic climbing ropes. Something, which protects you from falling and helps absorb the shocks. Something made out of love, commitment, and shared experience. For the last six weeks, our rope has been rubbing hard against a sharp rock edge of pain, and I can spot the first snapped threads coming loose. One day, the rope will be worn and unrecognisable. My love for him will have gone, and I will be free. Instead of giving me hope, this makes me incredibly sad.

Heather Nova – Paper Cup

Bitter sweet

I got the job. In fact, I didn’t just get the job, HR rang me an hour after the interview finished to let me know the jury’s decision had been taken in five minutes and unanimously. This is just the good news I needed to boost my badly dented confidence…

But guess who I am missing so badly I could start blurbing all over again? Think the 15^th of Feb may be turning into National Crying Day at this rate.

To T who would have been so proud. I would have sat on your lap while we checked-out houses for sale on the internet tonight... Cascadeur – The meaning

No tears

I have been smiling manically for five hours, pretending to be cool and confident. I sit in the car, James Blunt sings something about no tears and this is apparently my cue to melt into uncontrollable sobs. My make-up runs everywhere and I scare a mad French pedestrian off the road. The interview is over.

James Blunt – No tears

Holiday

People were fighting their way to the train, threatening to poke each other’s eyes out with skis and poles, clubbing me in the shins with their ski boots. Families off on holiday. I remember being one of them: Hastily packed sandwiches, children dropping their favourite toys, counting tickets and bags, the mixture of stress and excitment. I am going home to an empty flat.

The sun is low, the land undulates, covered in a green stubble of winter cereal. I think about my children, how their life story is so different to mine, and how I cannot really imagine what they are going through. My own parents had their ups and downs, but did not give up. And only now, as I discover a harsh new world of separation, custody and co-parenting, can I fully appreciate the gift they made us, by giving each other the time and chances they needed.

This is my daughter's song. It came out when I was expecting her and made me cry everytime. I am soppy at the best of times, but pregnant and soppy is just great. Francis Cabrel - Des hommes pareils

Someone's child

I am hurtling across France at 200 miles an hour, the sun is setting over some lakes in Northern Burgundy, the quiet beauty of my country unravels: Villages, cows, vineyards on a hillside, a light winter fog nestling in the valleys. It is the end of the day, the end of a wretched week too, and I am looking forward to a week end at my parents'.

The children are with T, and I hope they have a good time. Never had they been apart from him for two weeks before, and they have missed him dearly. Meanwhile, for a couple of days, I can stop being someone's mummy, and enjoy being someone’s child, feeling loved and safe, being fed too much and told to put a scarf on.

I discovered this song pretty much at the same time as the fact I was expecting my son. I guess this is his song. Let me know what you think!

Beth Gibbons- Mysteries

English cuisine, for real, innit

Today, I served a full English breakfast for ten, which is an interesting thing to do after a week of not getting more than 5 hours sleep a night, trying to finish a demanding job on time, dealing with tummy-bugged extra grumpy children and essentially feeling mildly suicidal great. Still, it reminded me that I hadn’t had a fry-up since I’d left the UK, and you know what? It was luuuvely, and apparently, there’s nothing like a bit of greasy stodge to impress a bunch of French ladies!

Anyway, there is a definite whiff of Spring in the air this week: The cafés’ terraces are filling up, pedal go-karts are back at the park, and the birds are going mad in the barren trees. Ooh, and I am typing this from my balcony, attempting to catch the sun so that I may not look too much like an aspirin-tablet-forgotten-at-the-back-of-a-cupboard for my job interview next week.

Coldplay - Don't panic ( we live in a beautiful world, yeah we do, yeah we do...Do we?)

Irony

What goes on in the head of a fourteen months old whose doting daddy is no longer there at night to blow raspberries on her tummy, to make her feel high-up and secure in his arms; whose mummy keeps making a crying face, whose brother is clinging to her for safety? How does she make sense of the fact that the family she was born into has been blown up into tiny shards? She grumbles when her gums are sore, empties cupboards, smiles, plays, does whatever tiny little girls do. She says “papa” 350 times a day. On the other end of town, “papa” works in heart surgery, literally helping mend broken hearts.

Donovan – Please don’t bend

Fruit

Late September in the Alps, still warm enough for shorts and t-shirts, but the golden sunlight caught in the strings of spider silk above the meadows a reminder that Autumn is around the corner. We were looking for some blackberries, and I am sure the cheeky things were hiding when they heard us coming. Down in the valley, we could see but no longer hear the bustle of the city, our daily lives. My daughter’s buggy was hard to push along the dirt tracks, and my son was whining that his legs hurt and he didn’t want to walk anymore. We were about to head back empty-handed when we came upon unexpected treasures: An abandoned orchard covered in the most delicious plums, then a single giant blackberry bush. I worked on the lower branches while T picked above my head. When we had enough for a tart, we gave in to the children’s whining and headed back, hands covered in spikes and blue juice. T excitedly suggested that we wrote down all the good wild fruit picking spots so we could remember them for next year, and we discussed a promising spot for blueberries and raspberries. On the way down, “I gotta feeling” played on the radio, we all sang along, waving madly in the car and startling rush hour drivers.

Black eyed peas - I gotta feeling

Dilemma

Every night, T phones the children. I suppose it makes him feel better, but the jury’s still out on whether the children appreciate it or not. Last night however, he also wanted to speak to me. I can see you wondering: Had he finally seen the light and wanted to say how sorry he was for the mess he’d made? Joined Al-Qaeda? Decided to become a Buddhist monk? Well, it’s almost as exciting as that: He wants to get come get his ski gear on Saturday night. And no, this cannot wait until he has the children next week, because presumably -ooh, let me take a wild guess here- he’s going skiing on Sunday. In other words, the man who left me a month ago rings in the middle of feeding time at the zoo to ask me to rummage through our ski gear, find his stuff and pack it for him, so that he may go skiing, while I try to keep up with work-work, house-work and children. The way I see it, I’ve got three options

1.     Carry on being a doormat: Pack his stuff and leave it in the cellar for collection as requested. I so resent having to be reasonable...

2.     Refuse to be a doormat: Leave a packed horse head in the cellar. May not be so helpful in the long run...

3.     Be crafty: soak his ski gear in super strength hot chilli pepper paste or something equally pleasant.

Seriously, I’m beat: What would you do?

What would you have done differently?

Today I heard a song on the radio about a guy who wishes he could travel back in time to change the course of events. Not wholly original, but it made me ponder the following pointless question: Had I known the bitter end of the story, what would I have done differently? Would I have taken T up on the offer of baby-sitting that brought us together? Let him get under my skin, talk me into trusting him, believed his promise never to abandon me?... I guess strangely the answer would still be yes. For I would rather be here now, than to not have tasted the richest and most accepting relationship of my life, the joy of wanting and building a family with someone, of holding our daughter... Either that, or I am really a closet masochist.

Here’s the song in question. French rap I’m afraid, and it starts off with a rendition of Happy birthday. Don’t be scared. Soprano – Hiro

Bumpy ride

My son’s currently fixated on a pop song called Bumpy ride, and likes practising some funny spastic dance moves around the living room. He has also taken to scrutinising my face as though he were checking the weather forecast, then announcing “mummy, you are sad/happy again”. I have had to explain over and over again that whilst I will be happy again, it may take a while, even as long as until his birthday, next Christmas (shocking), or possibly even longer. In the meantime, appropriately, it’s going to be a bumpy ride, there will be some happy times, and still some sad times. By this stage, I have usually lost him: Anything further away than his birthday is quite frankly unthinkable for a seven year old, and he’s gone back to splashing his sister in the bath or flying Lego across the room.

As you can guess from the title, the words are probably entirely inappropriate for childen, but kids seem to go wild for this song. Try it with yours and let me know how it goes! Mohombi – Bumpy ride