Ville de cocagne

16 years ago today I was pushing my boy out in a hospital in Carcassone.  I watched the monitor dead line then peak into mountains and screwed my face up while the nurses drank percolated coffee down the corridor.  
Child birth experience should have taught me that things fall back into order, but right there and then I couldn't imagine ever being able to drink coffee again.
The midwife brandished the new born Gabriel and, weighing in at 4k5, announced he'd be a rugby player.  

He never was.  Bijou brought him home one November evening, shaking and covered in mud.  I ran a bath, scrubbed him down and he never stepped foot on a pitch again.

We spent today in Toulouse, home of the greatest rugby team in France (discuss) and violets.  

Up on the first floor of  Forno Gusto, the children looked out of the window and counted the number of girls wearing bright green coats.
I'm not that interested in green coats and I'm not a flag waver, but in the Brexit fall out I'm moved by the concentric circles that they represent; the Region, the Country, Europe.

So here I am, beneath the Occitan cross, the Tricolore and the Twelve Stars.  

My boy is French, my daughter is a legal alien for the next 90 days and then becomes an alien and needs a visa to stay in the country in which she grew up. 

Pays de Cocagne. Definition:  Pays imaginaire où tout est en abondance.


There just happen to be times when things become unimaginable and don't fall back into order.