It's official...Issy is a proper Frenchy now. She sang La Marseillaise yesterday in the village square with all her classmates at a commemoration for Amiral de Grasse, a famous French admiral who was born in the village 200-odd years ago. It was amazing to hear her sing the French national anthem in perfect French, especially when she doesn't even know God Save The Queen! She has been practising all week and despite the fact that we had heavy heads thanks to a very late night, we were blown away.
I'm off to LA on a lovely job this week but it has extended from 8 days to almost three weeks, meaning I will be away for my birthday, so we had a few friends over for sushi and champers on Saturday. The highlights....making a speech barefoot on the bench as everyone sang happy birthday, falling over with Faye (thankfully by that time I was so 'relaxed' that neither of us hurt ourselves) and just catching up with all our lovely mates. Iain had been out the previous night in Cannes with all his old city mates plus Mat and Milly so to say he was fragile would be understating it somewhat.
He came home Saturday afternoon, really wanting to go to bed, but instead had to be the host wth the most and actually filled people's glasses up and was very effective, much more so than usual when he is too busy knocking back the vino to worry about silly things like making sure everyone else has a drink. Then he cut all the sushi that Issy and I spent Friday night making, and laid it all out beautifully. I'd like to say that he also cleared up while I went to bed but that would be a lie. When the last stragglers left at 3.30, he just mumbled 'gotta go bed, let's leave it til morning' always a mistake but I could see his point.
Had my second tennis lesson today. Liv is fuming that my coach is the best looking man that possibly either of us have ever seen, which certainly makes it a more enjoyable experience on a Monday morning. It was a toss up between the tall, dark and extremely handsome 25-year-old and the grey haired but very sweet closer to my age 50-year-old. Reader, who would you choose?
My efforts to be cool are failing miserably though. Last week, I fell over trying to return a shot and cut my knee and ended up a bloody, sweaty mess. And this week, I managed to top that by whacking him in the shoulder with my raquet as I tried to practise the shot he was demonstrating. He said he is going to wear a crash helmet for my next lesson and I don't think he's joking.