Lucky Man

Early start to get CarbBoy to his basketball tournament. This weekend is the town's festival of basketball - with the junior end of the tournament today, and the older kids tomorrow. Giving me two delightful days on the touchline (is it a touchline? Perhaps a sideline.) This morning's trauma was a lost basketball sock - eventually found (dirty) behind the box of toy cars.

I managed to escape for some of the morning and get busy back home. TallGirl was supposed to be helping out at the tournament so I eventually managed to turf her out of bed and into the shower. Helping her dry her hair I came across some insects. Oh joy. (Bizarrely they don't look like head lice, but I guess we have to treat them like that.)

A picnic lunch in the (just coming out) sunshine was amusing, sitting with a bunch of our neighbours talking about sayings that are the same in French and English (not many, turns out). This was all started by me describing CarbBoy as having his head in the clouds - which translates literally into French, but you can also say "Tete dans la lune" (head in the moon) leading to a discussion on what place "the man in the moon" has in British culture, leading onto a discussion on REM (why do I get myself into these situations? Talking about the weather or food and I'm safe, but my brain does often catch my mouth burbling away about something in French while my brain is pushing emergency buttons and screaming "Stop - you have no vocab to deal with this...."

Mr B came and joined us for a bit at the tournament, but those super-loud gymnasiums are not really his style, certainly not when his mind is on other things, so he didn't stick it for long. Finally the matches and the long, long presentation of trophies was over and I could scuttle home to help Mr B with some tricky wording he wanted to put together. Some gardening and some basil and lemon chicken and then CarbBoy (with cards won at a hoops contest today) wanted to learn Patience properly. So I talked him through a game. And, of course, it worked out. What are the chances? Now he's ruined for that game and totally doesn't understand the years of frustration you should go through before getting it to work out.