La Plume de Ma Tante est dans le Tupperware Box

Rodin's 'The Thinker' wondering
what he should have in his packed lunch

Not since Harold stood with both eyes looking out over the English Channel in October 1066 has a French invasion been so fearfully anticipated.

I was thinking this yesterday as I stood in front of a selection of pates and cold meats in Tesco, wondering what to buy for our French exchange student who arrives tomorrow. As I stood there, deliberating over a packet of Brussels pate and wondering if he'd mind that it wasn't from France, I was joined by a friend of mine who is also having a French boy to stay and was therefore looking equally stressed. We both had croissants in our trolleys.

It's a dilemma. Do I try and give the young lad some traditional British fare, so that he is immersed in our culture and heritage, or buy some French treats to make him feel at home? A bit of both, I think. Hence I'm cooking a beef stew and dumplings for his first meal tomorrow night but have bought him his favourite chorizo sausage for his packed lunches (though it's Spanish, which kind of muddies the water.)

The packed lunch saga has been my main worry, truth be told. Rory, for the last few years, has been allowed into town at lunchtime so his midday meal is a Greggs' steak bake or a bag of chips. But the French students will be on trips to Cambridge and London so I have to supply a pack-up. It took me an hour today to hunt out a Tupperware box; twice as long to find the corresponding lid. I've bought Walkers crisps in every variety plus some traditional British treats, namely Club biscuits and KitKats but then went off on a tangent picking up Port Salut and Boursin cheeses.

Maybe he'd like a chip pizza like this one we had in the Dordogne in 2010.

I may just open the fridge, point, and let him choose. Let's face it, there will be a considerable amount of pointing going on unless Jean Pierre speaks good English. By the way, Jean Pierre is his nom-de-plume (wow, did you see what I did there? Even thinking in French now). As I mentioned in a previous post, The French are Coming, I don't want him googling himself and becoming anxious about his host family.

I daren't tell JP I studied French at A level. That might lead him to think I'm able to speak the lingo when, in fact, my spoken French is pitiful. Give me a copy of Voltaire's Candide and I'll make a decent fist of summarising the story, but ask me to use verbs and string a sentence together and I'm scuppered. I was always a bit of a noun girl: liked to memorise the words in my vocabulary book. I remember 'le mouchoir' is a hankie and 'le parapluie' is an umbrella but ask me to say, "I have lost my hankie; maybe it's where I left my umbrella" and a long silence will ensue.

Having said that, I was quite proud of myself last night watching University Challenge. Jeremy Paxman asked the following question:
 "Putting the English preposition 'in' into the French word for 'an inn' gives the name for which fruit, eaten as a vegetable?"
 Both Manchester and Newcastle University contestants said, 'pineapple' and 'tomato' respectively, but I shouted out 'aubergine' and was correct because I knew the French word for an inn is 'une auberge'.

I may try and tell this story to JP tomorrow evening but, I fear, it may lose something in translation.

Going for Gold

2004 was an Olympic year. In Athens, finely sculpted bodies were pushing themselves to the limit to be ‘faster, higher, stronger’ while on the Mediterranean island of Menorca my body, seemingly sculpted with a blunt shovel, lay on a sun lounger, just about managing to turn over the pages of a book and stretch out for the brightly-coloured cocktail beside me.

Like most people in the hotel complex in Punta Prima, I had been making the most of the all-you-can-eat buffet at breakfast and dinner, often getting a little peckish at lunchtime too. After a few days of ensuring I was getting my money’s worth, I realised something had to give…before the sun lounger did.

Both my husband, Dougie, and eight year old son, Rory, were putting me to shame on the exercise front. Dougie was making a decent stab at becoming an Olympian, joining all the other competitive dads in the organised sporting events at this cosmopolitan resort. Huge national fervour took hold and communication barriers were overcome using the common language of shrugged shoulders, plenty of shouting and the constant peep from the referee’s whistle. The Italian men encouraged my Scottish husband to join them in the fiercely-contested volleyball and basketball tournaments. The Italy/Scotland team triumphed and Dougie, the big kid that he is, raced up to the stage that night to collect his medals.

Rory was just as active, spending a couple of hours each day in the Kids’ Club. We would watch him walk by in his yellow baseball cap, on a scavenger hunt or en route to the football pitch with his little friends. He would then spend the afternoon with us: leaping in and out of the pool, badgering his dad to throw the splash ball to him and clambering on and off his inflatable shark.

Did the spirit of the Olympics encourage me to partake in some exercise? It was Pedro, the archery instructor, whose torch eventually lit my fire. I had seen the tousled mop of dark hair belonging to this Spanish god and noticed he ran a class each day. I thought archery might suit me: not too exhausting, unlikely to make me perspire in an unattractive manner and pleasingly situated far away from the volleyball court.

As Pedro stood very close behind me, placing his arm on my arm, he helped to pull the arrow close to my cheek and whispered instructions into my ear:

“You need to have a firm grip, Senora…..now gently ease it back….steady…steady….now release”.

The arrow sliced through the air and landed, ‘thwack’, straight into the central gold section of the target.

“I think maybe you have done this before?” he enquired with the hint of a smile.

“Oh no,” I replied, breathless. “This is my first time.”

“I think Senora is a natural.”

"Do you? How marvellous! In that case, may I ask you one thing?”

“Si Senora.”

“Do I get a medal?”

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This is an entry for the Tots 100 travel-writing competition in association with Thomson Al Fresco. Al Fresco has 54 holiday parcs across Europe, each offering plenty of fun activities for families (including archery!).

If you would like to enter the competition, you can find details on the Tots 100 blog.