Sixteen year old Princess has travelled to France via London on a French exchange visit. She will be there until the end of January. Following are some extractions from emails sent and received.
Me
Lovely to hear you’ve arrived safely. You really are so lucky getting to swap your summer school holidays, 30°C+ days, for… err, winter and four weeks of French school. Look I know it may be a little hard to see how lucky you are at the moment, but trust me, you will do so one day.
P
sorry couldn’t skype last night as i lost my internet connection which keeps disappearing. ive tapped into some random wireless one now because billions appear due to the houses all being so cramped together in london.
Me
Well glad you are well. You haven’t missed much here, except the sun of course! Last night we headed off to Rodent boy’s end of year school spectacular The Perfect Gift. Basically a narrative where the lead girl tells her friends (and us) the exciting news that she is going to be a ‘big sister’. She asks these friends what present she could possibly get for the new baby. As they explore the predictable possibilities, these become the inevitable cues for each of the school years to all troop on stage dressed accordingly and sing a tenuously related song. The gift ideas included a ‘puppy’ to which Year 1 sang ‘How much is that doggy in the window’ all dressed as Dalmatians (sadly a couple of the fat kids looked more like cows). This was then followed by Year 2 performing ‘On the good ship lollipop’ in response to the strange suggestion that the baby would like lollies [sweets/candy]. Your brother’s Year 3 sang ‘Sing (sing a song)’ as perhaps a ‘musical gift’ might be more appropriate. Year 5 offered a whole plethora of ideas performing ‘My favourite things’ from the ‘Sound of Music’. But of course the ‘perfect gift’ for the baby was… Da daaaaa… LOVE! And what better song to convey this than… ‘Baby Love’ (oooow baby love…) by the Supremes! The grand finale featured the whole ensemble singing ‘What the world needs now (is love)’ and then finished with the upbeat gospel ‘Jesus! What a wonderful child’. It was at this point that the penny finally dropped with me exactly which baby (albeit metaphortically) we were talking about. On the way out, parents were all agreeing with each other how fantastic they thought it was… Hmmm, such low expectations. Soldier Boy, who sat at the back between two flirty, and slightly slutty looking girlfriends, (who’s evening seemed to brighten noticably for seeing him there), said to me as we were leaving ‘Well that was much better than I thought it was going to be… NOT!’.
P
wow. wish i’d been there too.
[...] these excesses. I’ve just about got over, and in fact beginning to now dine out a bit on the ‘Princess diaries’. I refer of course to how among other things, our sixteen-year-old Princess lost her passport in [...]