Sunday Sunday…..

Time continues to flow by at an indecent pace.

We bathe in the mild sunlight and listen to tales of gloom on the BBC UK weather forecast on radio 4 long wave which with radio breizh is about all we listen to.

Management clatters away some work of fiction for her blog meaning I have time to write something more factual as I wait for the kettle to boil for the second time today.

Now, it’s Sunday and of course that means the Intermarche is closed and in turn guarantees with certainty that the gas bottle will run out today. Such are the things I can take for granted.

We have been spending our summers here every year since 2003, but before that many other years starting in 1993 when the twins were barely 2 months old, and I find it very odd. Initially, with children our times here were a delight, then some terrible teenage years of decisions to cut our time short and return to the UK with a van full of rioters. Now we have a party of adults, some younger than others, and the times are far more civilised.

Every day management and I slip away for at least an hour of peace. A quiet trip into town on the excuse of shopping. A lovely interlude at the Intermarche, I can’t explain why Intermarche is interesting and Tesco’s is tedious, it just is.

A stop in the café on the way back is totally unnecessary so we do it anyway and collect fresh bread from the boulangerie while we are there.

I could really get used to living here, which is in itself not a good sign as children get older and independence looms.

€8 bought us a kilo of crevattes rose yesterday; I sat with four children and demolished the lot in a few minutes. The children only one of whom is mine would almost certainly never have known crevattes rose or moule or four course lunches for €9 where the plates move steadily round the table as everyone trades the things they don’t want with others who like them, or indeed Brittany itself if we had not known them. And the financial rewards of knowing them are what have allowed us to spend our summers here in the house that they bought for us, next door to the house that one of them has announced he intends to buy and live in himself!

Something that has struck me is that this is possibly a last time. With Bethan at 16 and awaiting the results of her GCSE’s; next year she may well have a car (or rather expect that I buy her one) and next summer there might be a job and money to earn meaning that she will not come with us. The year after it will be Branwen and Taliesin, then university will steal them all away to independence and freedom, Maybe one day one of them will sit here as a parent and write their own account of time abroad with children who will drive them to distraction too.

The era of family abroad, and indeed family itself might be drawing to an end. That all makes me sad, then again, what excesses could me and management get up to without the kids?

That does not bear thinking about, maybe we need the kids to keep our wilder excesses in check, I certainly hope so….

R