The children have been picking up some French. Tom is very keen to say merci whenever appropriate in a shop or cafe etc. They both say Bonjour grandmere to me in the mornings which is delightful. We all say the French words we know about whatever we are doing and they repeat them. Tom keeps count of how many words he now knows.
What a shock this morning when we (Alice, Thomas and me) walked to our local boulangerie which opens at 7.30 to purchase our croissants, and it was closed! Tragedy! Thomas immediately threw a tantrum and sat on the footpath. It was obviously a known fact that it would be closed on Wednesdays because there was no quieu as there has been every other day. I managed to placate him by promising banana pancakes for breakfast instead. I remembered we had one egg left, certainly some flour of whatever type it might be and some bananas. They went down well and Alice enjoyed them also.
I dont recall if I mentioned the flour story - not knowing whether the package was SR or Plain, but yesterday I was in the super marche and an Indian man asked me about the milk, if it was the type of milk to have in tea. It was. I asked him if he knew about the flour. We both went and examined the many and varied options we had and finally he pointed to the one that made chappattis. Not a lot of help really.
I have not been all that well - sore throat, cold sores, billious attack etc etc but seem to have recovered today. Richard gallantly brought me back to the apartment yesterday across Paris and two changes of Metro when I couldnt decide if I wanted to faint or vomit. Fortunately I did neither and spent the next 18 hours in bed and have as I say recovered. I think the amount of butter in everything is getting to me - and I love butter!
The worst thing about being ill last night is that I missed out on Richards lapin stew. It smelled good and the children loved it, I could hear them all laughing at the way both of them were sucking the bones clean.
Thomas and I climbed the steps the the Basillica on Monday - everyone else having done so earlier. He got annoyed that I needed to stop and rest between several of the flights. Elspeth ran up and down them yesterday 11 times for exercise!
Tom didnt want to go into the church saying he didnt believe in churches. I told him that as we had climbed all the way up, it was appropriate that we went inside and sat quietly for a few minutes to have a look. I told him he needed to be respectful of others views and he was. He asked about the candles and I explained what they were for. I was waiting for him to ask me to light a candle for Edward but he didnt and I didnt raise it with him but in retrospect I should have as he talked about Edward incessantly the rest of the day.
On the way down we took photos of each other at the fountain.
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