Ill babies and delectable Frenchmen

Pork Chop has now given me the cold that her Daddy gave to her, although his of course was the dreaded man flu and involved much wailing on the sofa along with outlandish demands for Feast bars at 11pm. Anyway, I am sitting here writing this with a thick head and feeling somewhat under the weather.

Earlier the munchkin and I scuttled off to baby rock and rhyme at the local library. This is basically a gathering of mums with their babies and toddlers and we all sing nursery rhymes - most of us, very badly. I personally cannot sing to save my life although I make the effort for my daughter's sake and just hope that the other mothers' voices drown out my screeching. I also can't remember half the words having last sung nursery rhymes when I was about two. So it generally goes something like, "I'm a jingle jangle scarecrow with a jingle jangle head.... da dada di dum di da mumble mumble mumble." But Pork Chop seems to enjoy it and it gets us out of the house for an hour.

On the walk home I started thinking about my past in that I wasn't always a well behaved aspiring yummy mummy and that I had actually lived a rather despicable and colourful few months in France. I went over there as part of my degree to learn French properly in the late Nineties. My friend, I shall call her The Redhead to save her blushes as she is now happily married with one child and another due imminently, and I searched high and low for an apartment. We were determined to go local rather than stay in halls of residence with other English students who never uttered more than a oui or non the whole time they were there. In the end we found a beautiful but miniscule apartment right in the centre of town. Dentist, doctor and bank on the door step, McDonalds and Quick just a five minute walk in either direction and, most importantly, a not very salubrious nightclub just around the corner. We moved in and set about making friends with the locals.

Now it must be pointed out that I did then have an English boyfriend of two years who had asked me to marry him but I was only 20, somewhat terrified of settling down and France was my great escape. The Redhead also had a French boyfriend having worked the previous few summers in the country. But as he was in Lille amd my boyfriend was in England it wasn't too long before certain indiscretions were committed by us. I would like to blame the alcohol - we managed to consume 18 bottles of wine and a bottle of creme de cassis in the first two weeks we were there - but we both knew what we were up to.

And as for what those indiscretions were shall have to wait as Pork Chop needs tending to.