petite anglaise

I haul Tadpole out of the bath, wrapped in not one, but two towels (one large bath towel to swaddle her adequately, and one baby sized one which she still is rather attached to because it has a hood with ladybirds on). Sitting on the toilet seat, I cradle her in my arms, savouring the moment.

“Mummy, can I be the petit chaperon rouge?” says Tadpole.

“If you’re little red riding hood, who am I?” I ask, knowing full well what the answer will be.

“You be the wolf, and I ask you the questions.”

I thought as much. I growl, although I think the sound I make is more bear than wolf. Not that I’ve ever met either, of course. The only wildlife I have seen in Belleville are pigeons, cockroaches and dogs.

“What big ears you’ve got,” says Tadpole, stepping into character.

“All the better for hearing you with!” My gruff voice (usually reserved for Gruffalo’s and Wild Things) makes Tadpole giggle.

“What a big nose you’ve got!”

I rub my nose against hers. “All the better for sniffing you with!”

“What big eyes you’ve got!”

“All the better for seeing you with,” I say, rolling my eyes.

I gnash my teeth, certain I know what is coming next. Tadpole looks up at me, a mischievous smile on her face.

“What big spots you’ve got!”

I stop, mid-gnash, the wind abruptly knocked out of my sails, and put a finger up to the small pimple on my chin, to see if it has grown since I last consulted the mirror. Tadpole’s smile falters for a moment as she waits to see how I will react.

“I’m not a leopard,” I reply, eventually, with forced joviality. “I’m a wolf. Wolves don’t have spots!”

This evening I have been mostly turning my flat upside down looking for the referral my doctor gave me for a dermatologist when I came off the pill. Over-sensitive, moi?

We alight from the taxi on avenue Matignon, our destination a trendy fusion restaurant called Market. It’s not somewhere it would ever have occurred to me to go, being more of an East end, quartiers populaires kind of girl, but I’ve been invited to join a group of people, two of whom are former colleagues of mine, and I’m tagging along purely for the pleasure of their company tonight.

The girls wear gauzy dresses and high heels, the men wear designer jeans and expensive-looking shirts. I have thrown on my patterned wrap dress (TopShop) and favourite brown boots and pray I don’t look too out of place.

I had been scheming to use this outing as an excuse to buy something new, with a half-formed plan to venture over to the Comptoir des Cotonniers, but in the end I spent the day with Tadpole, and it didn’t seem fair to drag her out foraging for clothes. I’m sure the day will come when shopping will be her favourite pastime, but right now she would rather we played with her new dominos and ate chicken fried rice in our regular haunt where the waiting staff don’t seem to mind if she draws on the paper tablecloths with felt tipped pens.

Market is beautiful: the lighting is soft and flattering, the table booked for our party of eight is set in a discreet oval alcove overlooking a courtyard. It manages to feel private and intimate, yet achieves this without cutting us off from our fellow diners. In the impeccable toilets, individual cloth serviettes are piled up in neat towers by the sink. I study a menu nervously, forcing myself not to look too closely at the prices, telling myself through gritted teeth that this is a treat; I deserve it. But solvent or insolvent, there is a part of me that will always shy away from spending € 120 on a single meal. It’s the way I’m wired, and I’m far from sure that it’s something I want to change.

I sip a kumquat mojito, then sample warm foie gras and wild mushrooms, velvety soft deer with quince purée and some sort of vegetable and cheese “emulsion”. I have no idea what the wine is that I am drinking, chosen by a connoisseur at the other end of the table, but it is heavenly. I finish with a fig tart served with peanut ice cream (although I confess I wish I’d plumped for the chestnut soufflé with caramel ice cream instead, a masterpiece).

We stagger out of the restaurant at around 1am, fed, watered and tipsy and begin to cast around for a reasonable bar in which to have a final drink, or two, before we go home. But this part of town is a wasteland of wide sterile avenues and closed luxury goods emporiums. The only watering holes whose names I recognise are the sort of places with door policies, merchant bankers and queues. They are places one goes to be seen. Nothing could be further from my definition of a fun place to kick back and have a drink.

After a spot of futile wandering and a watery, overpriced cocktail in a bar tragically mis-named “Success”, I wend my way home in a taxi, dropping a fellow diner off at the Ile St Louis on the way. I can’t help feeling that I have spent an evening on a different planet, instead of a mere fifteen minute taxi ride from chez moi. Dogged by a gnawing feeling of disquiet, unsettled somehow. I don’t belong: not in that place, not in that arrondissement.

At the familiar sight of Bastille, my body starts to relax. The taxi speeds along the Boulevard Richard Lenoir, above the concealed Canal St Martin, and my lips begin to curve upwards in a smile. Weaving through narrow, dimly lit backstreets we emerge onto the boulevard de la Villette and I feel gnarly knots of tension unravelling in my shoulders.

Belleville: shabby, dirty, teeming with life, ablaze with garish neon signs. As the taxi labours up the hill I make a silent vow. No more trying to be someone I’m not, no more frequenting exquisite, over-priced places that make me feel like I don’t and never will fit in. This is my neighbourhood, my world. As I hand the fare to the driver, the smell of my local kebab shop teases my nostrils and I breathe deeply.

I’m home.

I recently realised that I have a neighbour, a fellow bellevillois, who is also a blogger. A blogger, a Brit, parent of a toddler and a writer, no less. When we met for a coffee the other week in a bobo haunt near Jourdain, after covering the usual ground (work avoidance strategies, the art of procrastination, headlice), he mentioned that he and his co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista were planning a “virtual blog tour” to promote their book, due to be published by Wiley early next year, and he actually had the gall to ask me whether he could stop off chez petite on his tour.

I usually turn down such requests, because the content would stick out like a sore thumb slotted in between a slice of life and a serving of self-indulgent navel gazing, but he must have caught me when my guard was down, probably something to do with the fact that it was before 9am.

“I suppose I could sacrifice a little of my blog integrity for a friend, and a free café crème or two,” I said.

So, without further ado, I will put you into the hands of Mr Stuart Blethers.

Being a good (i.e. controlling) parent

Thanks for letting me visit your blog. I promise to do my best not to get too boring and technical and chase away all your readers.

I want to talk about children and computers, and more specifically about how we can be good parents and stop the little brats from having too much fun with our PCs. Now that Tadpole has discovered the web, it won’t be long before you have to rely on something a little more sophisticated than the fact she’s too young to read to restrict the kind of content she can access.

Fortunately, Windows Vista, the new version of the Microsoft operating system that is about to be released in the next few days, comes with a nice little feature called Parental Controls that lets Mums and Dads like you and me dictate exactly what our offspring can get up to when they’re preventing us from using our own computers.

With the Parental Controls feature, you can:

• Control what websites your child can and cannot visit - Charlie and Lola, yes; porn and warez, no.
• Specify what days and times your child can use the computer - no more than an hour on school nights, and a little longer at the weekend.
• Set rules based on ratings, content, or title to decide what games your child can play.
• Keep a virtual eye on what your child is up to with activity reports that provide details of her online activity.

There’s an interesting article on the Windows Vista Community website that goes into more detail about Parental Controls if you want to find out more.

Of course, the key to ensuring that our children use computers sensibly and safely is to talk to them about it. But using technology to help set a few boundaries can also come in handy.

- Stuart Mudie, co-author of The Unofficial Guide to Windows Vista

That was relatively painless, wasn’t it? I should compromise my integrity more often…

Please send your bribes/free stuff to petite.anglaise@gmail.com.

The agent immobilier motions me through the tiled entrance hall and out into a paved yard with a balcony, which looks out onto the back of a nearby school of architecture, which is slightly downhill. The courtyard is bathed in light, even on this rather grey, uninspiring day, with its small droplets of rain which mist my glasses and make the whole world look foggy. The residents have decorated the courtyard with a ramshackle assortment of potted plants. Perfect.

Beckoning me through a door onto a narrow staircase, we climb two flights of stairs and he throws open the door.

I fall in love.

The main room is freshly painted, with a wooden floor and exposed beams across the ceiling. It is filled with light and the window looks across the courtyard we just crossed. There is a brand new kitchenette, with two hobs and a mini-bar sized fridge, just like in my first ever Parisian apartment. A tiny shower room and toilet (and it’s not even a chemical toilet, the estate agents is at pains to point out) open off the kitchen, in a room the size of a cupboard.

Of the three studios I have visited this week, this is the one. I want it, desperately. I can picture a spacious desk placed just so, by the window. A sofa bed in the corner, a large leafy plant. An uncluttered, bright, empty space where there is nothing to distract me (possibly not even the internet!) It will be my retreat, my writing place, but also the hotel petite anglaise, where good friends can come and stay at weekends. The home I share with Tadpole will become just that, the place where I relax. Where the computer once dominated my living room/bedroom/office, there will now be space for an adult sized dining table.

And so I go back to the agency, and take out all my paperwork: contract from publishers (in English), the compulsory electricity bill (why this document is so sacred I do not know, because the EDF never ask for proof of identity before opening an account), a photocopy of my carte de séjour. I explain that renting makes perfect sense for me, right now, as I can expense it, and add that I will obtain a bank guarantee, in order to reassure the proprietor, lest he throw up his hands in despair at the lack of the usual payslips. I hope that I will be seen as an attractive tenant, a stable, quiet individual who won’t even sleep there, who won’t mess up their freshly painted walls or really do much “living”.

Now I sit beside the phone and pray that I will get the call to say it is mine, and soon.

“So, what do you do in Paris?” says the friend of a friend I’ve just been introduced to.

“Oh, I’ve been here for eleven years now, and I was a secretary for most of that time,” I say. “And now, I’m, um, writing this memoir…” I let my voice trail off in a way that will make it sound like I’ve just said the most boring thing in the world, hoping to nip any further questions in the bud.

“You’re slowly getting better at this, see?” whispers my girlfriend, with a wink.

“Well, maybe, but I’m still blushing, you just can’t see it in this light,” I reply doubtfully.

I live in constant dread of having to tell people just what it is that I do for a living.

Since April, the question has been one king-sized can of worms. (Can one buy cans of worms? Aren’t they maggots? For fishing?) Because “I’m between jobs right now” or “I got fired” usually snowballs into more questions, and yet more, until the whole grisly truth comes out. It’s long, it’s involved, and I end up feeling oddly like I’m being interviewed rather than actually making conversation.

Ever since contracts were exchanged and it all became terrifyingly official, I have no longer been able to truthfully play the chômeur card, and so now I have to admit, bashfully, that I am writing to earn my bread and butter. “Admit” probably isn’t the right word, but the only other phrase which springs to mind right now is “own up to”, which isn’t much of an improvement, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Of course if I mention writing, the questions come even thicker and faster. And although I’m going to be a writer, one day, when I’m published, I don’t feel like I own that title yet. So I play it coy, hide behind my hair a lot (at least until that fifth drink, when my alter ego takes over and I probably say something along the lines of “I’m a little bit famous, can I grope your bottom?”) and attempt to keep everything as vague as I can.

Because book leads inevitably to blog. And my name is now connected to this blog in every conceivable search engine. Nasty pictures taken by photographers in the pay of tabloids who were clearly given the brief that they should attempt to look down my top, or up my skirt, are on display. Anonymity, however relative and fragile a concept that was, is no longer an option. And that is not always a good thing.

Twice recently I received worried emails the day after meeting someone new, the senders fretting about whether they were about to find themselves the subject of a forthcoming blog post (they won’t, I don’t cross those boundaries without permission of sorts). And those are the ones who knew what a blog was before we met. Those people who don’t know must undoubtedly think I am some sort of narcissistic self-centred weirdo when they hear that I share slices of my personal life with the internet at large.

And yes, those people were boys. And yes, what I’m really concerned about here, is whether it will hamper my chances of success on the dating market, my chances of finding someone a bit special once I’ve got my current teenage phase well and truly out of my system. Because you’ve got to admit that things are a little unequal, not to say unbalanced, if menfolk that I meet are able to read about my whole life on the internet before our second date, a state of affairs that leaves me feeling at something of a disadvantage.

So, it will have to be a blogger. Apparently there are currently three million blogs in France, so hopefully at least a handful are not written by teenagers and girls.

I’ll keep you, ahem, posted.

I caught Tadpole singing this rather disturbing little song this evening in the bath, which mamie apparently taught her. It’s rather a coincidence that she should sing it now, as St Catherine’s day is on November 25th.

A Catherinette, according to French tradition, is a woman who has reached the ripe old age of twenty five and remains unmarried and “pure”, as St Catherine herself is the patron saint of unmarried girls. At thirty-four, I am not only long past my sell by date, but an unmarried mother to boot, so I regret that I won’t be donning green and yellow headgear on the day of my fête.

Dodo Dinette,
Saint Catherinette,
Endormez-moi cet enfant,
jusqu’à l’âge de vingt ans.
Quand elle aura vingt ans sonné,
on pourra la marier!

I was poised to write a comment in response to this post, fully expecting to unearth the usual “suppository porn stories” and “secretary spanked boss” or “stapler of death” queries which are pretty much a constant. But as I scrolled through the search terms for other amusing examples, the findings were often puzzling, sometimes poignant and, well, I decided they merited a mini-post of their own.

Now I know that google is for many of us the first port of call in a crisis, a place where one can find the answer to many of the questions we would have asked our mother or doctor. When Tadpole took it upon herself to swallow a pebble a few months ago, I typed in all manner of queries about “swallowed foreign objects” before reaching for the telephone to call Mr Frog (who has a couple of friends who are GP’s), then my mum.

So it is not too surprising to see people asking the all-knowing google algorithm for answers to questions like:

• can the musty spider pushchair be used from birth?
• my boyfriend wears my knickers is he gay?

But, having said that, it never occured to me to use google for relationship counselling.

• How to heal your broken heart after a divorce?
• Can you break soul ties and remain friends?
• Why won’t he marry me after 13 years?
• How to imitate my husband’s voice to fool his girlfriend?

There I was trawling through the stats looking for funnies, and instead, rather unexpectedly, I found myself empathising; feeling other people’s pain.

There was only one question I did feel equipped to answer, and it may be the subject of a forthcoming post, one day.

how to talk dirty in French?

However, being the sort of person who is more likely to say “is it in yet?” or “ouch, that’s starting to chafe” than “come here big boy”, I suspect “petite’s guide to bedroom French” may not be quite what the googlers had in mind.

The alarm goes off at 7.15 am. I groan, and press snooze. Today is admittedly less painful than yesterday, when I got a OuiFM wake-up call at 6.55 am and then had to speak to some chirpy, wacky and thoroughly annoying radio talk show presenter for five minutes while lying semi-comatose in bed in my undies.

I am not a morning person, you see. All those proper writers who say they do their best work at dawn, well, what are they on? Personally I function best in the afternoons, or occasionally in the evenings, once Tadpole is in bed, a glass of wine within easy reach of the computer.

At 7.35 am, I finally stop hitting snooze and muster up the enthusiasm to go and wake Tadpole. Creeping into her bedroom I watch her for a moment. She is deeply asleep, on her tummy with her head wedged up against the wall, as usual. She has been busy in the night: the dolls she took to bed with her yesterday evening are now stark naked, their clothes scattered on the floor. I pick a pair of knitted pants out of the (empty) potty by the side of her bed.

Whispering her name, I muss her curls and feel the warmth of her neck against my fingertips. She grimaces in her sleep, eyes firmly closed, then stirs, before shifting her position slightly and going back to sleep. So, pulling the covers back, I slip into bed beside her (a manoeuvre which involves bending my legs as the bed is a special lilliputian version) and cuddle up. This is my favourite part of the day: the snuggling, the warmth, the sleepy smell of her body and pyjamas, the fact that she is too comatose to actually protest and wriggle out of my arms. It’s perfect, except for one little detail.

I’m lying slap bang in the middle of an enormous wet patch.

“Darling,” I say when she finally opens her eyes, determined not to sound cross, or accusing. “You’ve had a wee wee in the bed. Were you sleeping? You know I put the potty next to your bed for when you feel like you need to go…”

“I had a dream about a monster,” Tadpole replies. I’m not sure if this is an explanation, or just her way of avoiding the subject at hand.

“I’ll have to wash the sheets now, and get those trousers off you sweetie, can you sit up for a minute?”

“But mummy?”

“Yes?”

“It doesn’t matter because you put the special cover on the mattress yesterday.”

I did indeed. I bought a quilt (for Mr Frog’s house) and a waterproof sheet (for mine) so that we could prepare for nocturnal potty training, round two. Tadpole had watched me fit the waterproof undersheet, and seemed to be paying attention when I patiently explained what it was for. Clearly I was mistaken.

“But darling, that’s for if you have an accident, but you still need to do your wee wee’s on the potty when you can, now that you have no nappy on.”

I see realisation dawn in her face, as clearly as if a cartoon lightbulb had suddenly appeared above her head.

“Oh. I thought it was alright to do a wee wee because the bed is wearing a nappy,” she explains.

I giggle. She giggles. I hug her to me.

I decide to lie in the wet patch for a little bit longer.

Saturday evening saw me going to the Festival Music Allemand at La Bellevilloise with partner in crime and girl about town, Meg. Thankfully it was all about electronica and beautiful people with artfully distressed hair, rather than lederhosen and sausages.

“Is it just me,” I asked Meg, eyes like saucers,”or is there an uncommonly large quantity of good looking menfolk in this room?”

“There is indeed,” she replied “I wonder where they all hide during the day?”

“Well, glad to hear it’s not just me. Because occasionally I get a hormone attack and find everyone attractive, even when they clearly can’t be,” I explained. “I think it’s the human equivalent to a dog being on heat.”

I surveyed the room. All the girls had über cool fringes. If I’d had a pair of scissors to hand, I would have dragged Meg to the toilets and begged her to cut my hair there and then.

As the night wore on and the expensive beer flowed freely, things predictably degenerated, and we found ourselves regressing to behaviour I can only describe as “teenaged”. What else could possibly explain:

• Meg popping out to buy cheap cans of beer which she tried (and failed) to smuggle back into the venue in her tights. I didn’t witness it, but I’m told a can dropped from between her legs in front of a bouncer as though she were laying an egg. I don’t think her puzzled “what on earth was that doing in my pantyhose?” look fooled anyone.
• a bottle of vodka finding its way off the bar and into our possession, which seemed like a strange sort of justice given that there had been supposed to be a free vodka open bar earlier in the evening, which never materialised.
• me groping people’s bottoms. Two male, one female. Apologies to all concerned. (All I can say in my defence is that I watched Shortbus the previous night and it had a profound effect on me).
• me getting into the spirit of the festival by snogging a rather attractive German boy in the middle of the dancefloor (yes, snogging is the only appropriate word which can be used to describe that kind of drunken, swaying liplock).

I came down to earth with a bump the following day with a distinctly thirtysomething hangover, the likes of which I have rarely experienced. But it was fun, and oh so refreshing while it lasted.

“So, what was it all like, that stuff, back in July?” a few people asked me this weekend.

These were people I hadn’t seen for a year or more. People who had met me once (while tipsy) back in the days when I was being branded an internet adulteress and I had that slightly indecent, back in the saddle, new relationship glow about me.

Not an easy question to answer. My responses ranged from “scary” to “surreal” to “terrifying”, and I didn’t feel able to elaborate. But it got me thinking nonetheless. About everything I didn’t/couldn’t say at the time.

When I think back to the weeks that followed my unceremonious dismissal, I see myself at home, shutters closed, Tadpole (fortunately) with her grandparents. I was in pieces. Watching ten episodes of Lost a day, back-to-back, in my pyjamas. I had little or no appetite. Sleep was elusive. My hair hung in a gnarly, unbrushed ponytail. I shook like a leaf if I so much as smelt a cup of coffee. Kind friends invited me for cups of tea, and I spilled my guts, talking at one hundred miles an hour, high on adrenaline.

My life was a web of lies. Or, to be more accurate, withheld information. My readers couldn’t know I’d been fired because I wanted that news to come out only when I judged the time was right, and when I was sure that coming clean couldn’t cause me any additional harm. My notary, estate agent and bank manager couldn’t know I’d been fired, because I was still figuring out whether I dared sign my loan documents without disclosing my new circumstances.

I spent two months in limbo, consulting lawyers, worrying about whether or not there was any substance to the threats of legal action, regularly speaking to my journalist friend but asking him to hold off, yet simultaneously fearing that by July, it would be old news. I had mixed feelings about letting the story run at all; agonised over whether I had more to lose than I had to gain.

The story ran on a Tuesday, and I had no idea it would be the first of many until my phone started ringing, in the middle of my ASSEDIC interview, where I was sorting out my entitlement to unemployment benefit.

I was scheduled to move into my new apartment five days later, knee deep in boxes, flitting back and forth making final preparations. The new place had no internet access, so any time I spent there meant I was offline, unable to see how my story was snowballing across the web. I built wardrobes, took deliveries of appliances, and waited in for technicians while simultaneously fielding calls and giving interviews on my mobile phone in French and English.

Paris was in the throes of a heatwave, and I dripped with sweat every time I so much as changed a lightbulb. But in between the furniture assembly and deliveries I scampered back to the old flat down the road to approve hundreds of comments and scour a mountain of email for the important stuff that needed answering immediately. To change into any clean clothes I could find and have pictures taken by some photographer while my arm rested against a scalding hot balcony railing. I answered my emails at midnight, wrote a piece for the Guardian at 3 am, dropped Tadpole off with Mr Frog at 7 am so that I could have my picture taken for The Sunday Times in a café (photos never used, to my disappointment) while people all around me drank their first coffee of the day, nibbled croissants.

It was scary. Surreal. Terrifying. There wasn’t a single moment when I didn’t worry that in exchange for fifteen minutes of “fame” which no-one would remember a few weeks later, I would be left with a handful of yellowing press cuttings and no prospect of working as a PA in Paris again. When my full name was revealed - and I wasn’t stupid enough to think this couldn’t be found, just naïve enough to think that it didn’t add anything to the story and therefore people might respect my wish not to use it - I was left wondering whether the gamble had been worth it, after all. Journalists were sniffing around my home village, trying to find my daughter’s name, to contact Jim in Rennes, Mr Frog, and god knows who else. I felt exposed, picked over and extremely foolish for thinking that I could remain in any semblance of control.

I could only hope against hope that the emails coming in from agents and publishers represented some sort of genuine interest, although I didn’t have the time to explore those avenues just yet.

The day before I moved flats, there was a hasty trip to Ikea. Mr Frog and I had decided to make use of the van I’d hired (which he was driving), so that I could pick up a few things, and he could buy Tadpole a new bed and find some plants for his flat. We stopped for a snack; I knocked back an ill-advised espresso.

A few minutes later, in the lighting section, I had an enormous panic attack. There were people everywhere, but I didn’t care, all I wanted to do was let my legs go out from under me and curl up in a tight ball on the floor. My heartbeat was rapid, erratic; I couldn’t breathe. Stricken, I stared at Mr Frog, wide-eyed, unable to speak. I wanted to be hugged, for someone to whisper calming words in my ear. But Mr Frog couldn’t be that person. It was too much to ask of him. Instead I found a chair, put my head between my knees and took deep breaths until the feelings subsided. Not completely, but just enough for me to stand up and carry on, gripping the trolley with white knuckles.

I still get the panic attacks, although less often, less intense. Waterstones, Birmingham, August. An Italian restaurant in York, October. I always do my utmost to hide them from Tadpole, and whoever I may be with. Good things have happened since July and I feel lucky, grateful and slightly disbelieving in equal measures. But when every single thing in your life changes - your boyfriend leaves, you move house, you lose a job, find a new career - all in the space of six short months, it cannot fail to knock you sideways. It will take time to make sense of it all, to process, digest, and make it a part of who I am, not just something that happened to me.

I’m not quite there yet, but I hope I will be, soon.

I hear the unmistakable sounds of Mr Frog and Tadpole approaching in the stairwell and fling open the front door eagerly. Despite her pitifully spotty and feverish state, Tadpole dives enthusiastically into my arms, giggling with pleasure at being reunited, finally, after a long week apart. I scoop her up and carry her through to my bedroom, where we sit on my (scarlet) bed and I hug her needily, in silence, nose buried in blonde corkscrew curls, while Mr Frog starts unpacking his holdall.

“Mummy, I’ve got la varicelle, look!” whispers Tadpole. At this stage, fully clothed, the full extent of her affliction is not apparent, but the area around her mouth and nostrils is red and inflamed with a swarm of tiny blemishes, and a few larger, crispier specimens are clearly visible in her scalp. I scratch my own head, in sympathy. “Do what I say, not what I do” is my motto.

“Do you know what that’s called in English?” I reply, catching Mr Frog’s eye and smiling.

“Chicken POTS!” shouts Tadpole, triumphantly.

The first I heard of the whole fiasco was a text message received while swaying drunkenly in a London pub, in which Mr Frog informed me that Tadpole had been afflicted with “the chicken pots”. Too preoccupied to correct him, I had allowed him to labour under this misconception for the whole weekend, and any attempt to convince Tadpole that this is not the correct name for her illness is now unlikely to be met with success. Once my daughter gets an idea in her head, she will not be swayed.

“I stopped in Boots and got calamine lotion,” I say to Mr Frog, pointing at the bottle of strawberry milkshake like liquid which sits by the computer, proud of my foresight. I notice then that he is brandishing a prescription as long as my arm. Clearly a French doctor has already been consulted.

The resulting prescription:

• Digluconate de chlorhexidine - a mysterious potion to be used instead of soap to avoid infection;
• Anti-histamine medicine to counteract itching;
• An antiseptic spray to be used on any sores which have been scratched;
• Doliprane syrup - equivalent of Calpol.

“No suppositories?” I remark, an eyebrow raised in mock surprise.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

This morning, after a night of fitful co-sleeping, Tadpole and I make it to the neighbouring pharmacie with our shopping list. My gaze is riveted on the till. Things have been getting tight since I signed off my benefits. For Tadpole, it’s business as usual, but I am mostly existing on Franprix’s own brand packet soup and wholemeal sliced bread.

Which makes it all the more galling when the rest of the day is spent arguing with an ungrateful Tadople who:

• refuses to have a bath
• refuses to let me dab on any calamine lotion or use the spray (too cold, apparently)
• refuses to wee for several hours (it hurts, and feels hot)
• refuses to take her anti-histamine (the first dose didn’t taste very nice)

Such is her state of distress whenever I mention any of the above, so pained is her “no THANK YOU mummy!” (I note her rare, desperate use of politeness in this context), so immune is she to bribery (chocolate biscuits, cbeebies on the computer, ice cream) that I find myself utterly powerless to do anything to help Her Royal Itchiness.

My unappetising tomato and vermicelli soup simmering resentfully on the hob, I wonder whether to try and administer potions and lotions in Tadpole’s sleep.

The thing One of the things that I really didn’t expect to happen when I started blogging, back in July 2004, was that it would kick start my social life in quite the way it did. Sitting on the Eurostar as it hurtled under the English Channel this afternoon, feeling a little melancholy - as you always do after something you have looked forward to for weeks has finally been and gone - I mulled over the part people I have met through this blog now play in my life. Some are but fleeting acquaintances, others have become firm friends. What they all have in common is that I doubt I would have met a single one of these lovely people if it hadn’t been for this peculiar internet hobby we have in common.

God bless t’internet.

Tuesday:

lauren maîtresse
elisabeth coquette
meg blagueur

Thursday:

hugo
iain baseball

Friday:

mrs bobby
mr boat

Saturday:

In no particular order (and apologies if I have forgotten anyone)…

andre, mike, jonnyb, one track, mimi, unluckyman, greavsie, anxious, tim, girl on a train, lovely leonie, monkeylady, meg, karen, pete, pixeldiva, damian, clare, robin, hydragenic

So many lovely people in one single pub I never did see before. If it had fallen to the centre of the earth (although I can’t think why it would have done), there would have been one hell of a gaping void in the blogosphere.

This article was published in the Paris section of weekly news magazine The Nouvel Observateur today. The interview actually took place in early September, if I remember correctly, and the photographer popped round to see me at home a few weeks later.

A bit of a character, he started by telling me that he thought all the pictures which had been used by the English press - with the exception of the one used by the Guardian - had been hideous and aged me approximately ten years.

I was inclined to agree, most had been taken under sweltering sun, in the middle of the day, when the light conditions were at their most unforgiving and I could do little more than squint at the camera with a furrowed brow. I also suspect that the editors specifically picked photos where I looked mildly annoyed (with the photographer, because I hated every minute of leaning in unnatural poses against pillars, trees and balcony railings) because they matched the story (annoyed with my former employer).

Mr Obs Photographer said his “Fait Divers” page tended to be a little artier, and that he was looking for something which summed up my personality, and my blog, and liked to keep snapping away until he got precisely what he wanted. I posed, awkwardly, in the room which serves as my living room/bedroom/study for approximately two hours, until I finally begged him to leave, at the end of my patience. The pictures taken seated in front of my computer, I could understand. Those photos which showed my bookcase in the background, ditto. But the ones taken against a backdrop of scarlet sheets, I admit to having some reservations about.

It was only when the photographer was on the verge of leaving that I finally understood what the “scarlet woman” sequence had been about.

“The thing that really struck me when I looked at your blog,” he said, in French, “was the fact that you said you have been living dans le péché.”

I giggled. The penny (or centime) had finally dropped.

“Living in sin is an English phrase which just means that I wasn’t married,” I clarified.

“Oh!” he said, clearly crestfallen.

I don’t know if I dare imagine what he thought “vivre dans le péché” might mean, but the result of his misunderstanding makes quite a nice picture, I think.