Today the children started school….La Rentrée. I must admit, it was all a bit of a shock. For some reason we had assumed that 29th August was a Thursday, they don’t go to school on Wednesdays and without checking we naturally thought that the start day was Thursday. (It’s easy to forget what day of the week it is here, let alone the date!)

By sheer fluke, I asked the fella in the village shop if Diddy’s school started on Thursday (we had been told that often the older children return a bit later) and he said, ‘no, they all go back tommorrow’. After some ‘are you positively, absolutely sure?’-type questions we went to the school itself, to find the teachers busy preparing for the following day. Phew! It doesn’t do to be a day late on your very first day.

So, the rest of the evening was spent in fevered activity; outfit choosing, form filling, phot-copying of essential documents, bathing.

After the initial shock of getting up at 7am and amid much excitement, I took Diddy and Plum took The Boy. On arriving at school the excitement was quickly replaced by nervousness and fear, and that was just me! I left Diddy looking utterly bewildered, confused and petrified, although at that point her friend Daisy turned up and the situation improved.

The Boy had apparantly just tripped in without a care in the world!

I busied myself for the rest of the day, took Debs to the airport and tried not to think about them both languishing in confusion and tears.

I needn’t have bothered! Reports so far are that they both had a lovely time. They didn’t understand much but it didn’t seem to worry them. The Boy was a bit put out that football was off after someone kicked the ball over the fence during first play and Diddy didn’t like the haricots verts…..not bad for a first day!

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