Skip to main content

Firstborn starts a craze

About to dive headfirst into the whirling chaos that is the school gates, I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn. Mme A is standing there, looking impossibly chic with an unreadable expression on her perfectly made-up face.

"I must speek wiz you," she says.

"OK," I push the kids through the gate, where they are immediately swallowed up by a mass of violently flailing limbs, then step to one side to let the other latecomers through.

Mme A has adopted a combative stance. "Eez it true that your cheeld 'as geeven ze teecher a ring? And zis is OK wiz you? Eez it? Eez it?"

She has gone mad... insane... all those years of dietary deprivation have finally come home to roost. I smile, trying to placate the poor woman."Erm, yes. It was a plastic ring from her dressing up box. Why shouldn't it be OK?"

Mme A looks as if she is about to explode, "My Henri is doing ze copy-cat! He 'as been steeling my rings and geeving zem to ze teecher! Eet is 'orrible!" She puffs wildly, "Zen zis morning I catch 'im red-'anded wiz my Cartier watch! Tryeeng to sneek it in 'is book bag!"

She glares at me, does that peculiar French thing that sounds like "Boof!" and flounces off.

As it turns out, the other kids in Year One were so impressed with Firstborn's generosity that it sparked a trend. 30 five and six year-olds have been vying with each other to bring the sparkliest, shiniest item of jewellery they can beg, steal or borrow; some considering the maternal jewellery box to be fair game. I, of course, am being blamed for the whole unfortunate situation by a number of irate mamans with misplaced family heirlooms.

It could only happen in Kensington...

(sigh)

Comments

Anonymous said…
Well, Mme A (for arse no doubt) can just Boof! orf
sarah said…
That is hysterical. (and I love the "oh la la" label) LOL
Kate B. said…
Thank you Sarah. "Oh la la" is what I say silently in my head whenever I am snubbed/ rubbished or made to feel like a small grubby gauche English schoolgirl by one of the impossible glam French Mamas at the school gates. So far this small phrase has allowed me to keep my grubby gauche English rage to myself and allowed them to escape unscathed.

Boof!

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the