You did what?.....................

Twenty years of living in France!

And no not in a prison or mental home, although for those of ye who have visited my home you may disagree!

Maybe I should have had my head examined but like all ideas you don't always know the outcome , you know like the idea of "lets make a huge ship and sail from England to America really fast - and lets call it the Titanic!!"  or "Shakleton do you fancy visiting the South Pole?" or better still  "Tiger Woods asked me to marry me - wow me sooo lucky!!!"

I was totally prepared for my journey to France, yeah I did German!! Well one of my brothers kindly pointed out that since France had been invaded a couple of times by Germany that surely by now they could speak the lingo!

I was going to do the au pair stint, you know stay with a family look after a few kids and enjoy the sights and sounds of Paris. Luckily the family were lovely and I am still friendly with them 20 years later  (see their children did survive my tender loving care!)  or else they cannot afford to move house and do not know how to avoid me!
 It was really strange for me to be somewhere where I really hadn't a clue what people were saying to me and not just because I am a dimwit no they were actually speaking another language - the meanies - simple things like going to the post office, buying a bus ticket or just going to the shop was complicated at first. And the most important thing I did learn was when French people spoke subtitles did not automatically appear in front of them!!!!!
 And of course I was sick, yes homesick, I rang home almost every second day, I wrote at least 250 letters a week! I wrote to EVERYBODY I had ever met in my short life.


Dear Barbara, We sat beside each other when we were 10 years old - wow how time flies anyway how are you keeping, me I am living in France, send me your news!!! 
P.S. Remember when we used to watch The Little House on the Praerie together??
or
Dear Mrs Morey, I did enjoy been in your german class for those 5 years but now that I am living in France I realised I should have switched over to guess what - oui Français! However since it was Sr Mary Forest (I kid you not that was her name) who did that class and really did not inspire me (unfortunately her voice had a droning quality that even french could not pep up) now ha ha here I am in France, isn't that just so funny. So would you be interested in givng me some hints on how to speak the french lingo as I am stuck here for a year?  Auf wiedersein (see haven't lost it)
or
Dear Fr James, I did not always enjoy your sermons every Sunday at Mass but would it be possible for you to send me any old ones you have lying round the house because they may make sense now that I have absolutely no social life I have lots of free time. God Bless

Yes desperate times called for desperate measures.

Then life kicks in, working, making friends, social life, finding a place to live, cooking for yourself (major eye opener especially for the poor people I cooked for), paying bills, laundry etc etc


The plan was to only stay one year - obviousily counting was not my strong point. Ah well nobody is perfect, I mean it could have been worse I could have ended up in Siberia although some French women can give you looks that could turn you to ice - mon dieu what is she wearing?

If someone had told me when I was 21 years old that I would end living in a foreign country  I would have laughed myself silly,  foreign countries were only good for holidays not actually living there full-time, oh no I was planning to live in an anglophone country like any other normal person!!!

However it turned out that well I am not a normal person (yes some of ye already guessed it) and picked a different route. So far it has been a fairly interesting route but at times I do have to pinch myself (or some 'good' friend volunteers to pinch me) at how it did turn out and even now when I bump into somebody from the past and tell them a bit about myself - short version of course - I still get "you did what? moved to France? what did you do that for?", my answer "it seemed like a good idea at the time......................."

Still does.

You never know...........

Happens to all of us with an e-mail address, one day you will receive an inspirational and moving message. Something about how to enjoy life, live in the moment,  make most of your loved ones etc etc

Some of them are well written and just to make it seem really authentic then names like Dalai Lama, Ghandi or even some old withered chinese woman is thrown in to make us feel "gosh if  the Dalai thought that well it must be TRUE" but they are like fishing lines thrown into the sea of life (how poetic is that??) and the hook is we have to forward it to our nearest and dearest as soon as possible.You know the ones that say "forward this to 6 friends in the next 35.6 seconds and something FANTASTIC will happen to you"  or " send this to 5-8 friends = one wish comes true,  9-15 friends = three wishes come true and for 5000 friends = favourite pet comes back from the dead!"
Okay the last bit is untrue so far!
These e-mails are just too tempting for me cos they break my rule - you know the rule we all have about not bombarding our friends and family with really bad jokes, videos etc etc
(By the way please accept my heartfelt apologies for ALL then ones I have sent in the past before my rule kicked into action or was it one of my friends kicked me into action!!)

For me it is hard to resist because well to be honest I do all those little crazy things like when I see one magpie well I wave at it (you know the rhyme about magpies one for sorrow, two for joy etc ) well to be on the safe side when I see one I just have to wave at it because that is suppose to get rid of the bad luck - okay writing that down does make it sound way more odd than when I am waving like a demented egit at solo magpies but hey they love it when I do wave at them.........honest!! Enough on quirky habits!

So getting back to these e-mails, I am so tempted to forward them because well you never know all my wishes may come true. Like yeah right!!!

Did I get thinner?   NOPE  (may have helped if I went on a diet!!)
Did I win the lotto?  NOPE (may have helped if I played more often)
Did I stop eating chocolate?   NOPE (clue - look at the answer for the first question)
Did George Clooney come to see me?   NOPE  (or else I may have been food shopping that day)
All in the negative you see including cool car, fabulous holiday and toy boy - oh wait the last one did arrive yeah he was born last week!!

Nothing so far but that is why they are so tempting to me, maybe there is an inspirational e-mail just on the horizon that once forwarded to all my friends and family - accompanied by sincere apologies of course - then suddenly all my wishes will come true you never know...........................