Ma famille française

I learnt first thing this morning that the grandfather of the French twin baby girls for whom I au paired* in 1982 died aged 93 yesterday. His death follows that of his wife aged 91, just six weeks ago on 16th January.

This photo dates from the summer of that year. In this period, often there were only five of us at their house château in Auvergne during the week, i.e. my hosts, myself, and the twins. Meanwhile the rest of the family, including the twins' parents, were at work in Paris, only returning to Auvergne late on Friday evenings for the weekends. This meant that I got to know this lovely couple very well. I like to think that they became as fond of me as I of them. I have stayed in touch with them ever since, looking forward to the annual Etoile filante every January. The last edition arrived in Edinburgh just a couple of weeks ago.

In 1982 my two charges were this couple’s only grandchildren. They have left four children, fifteen grandchildren, and twenty-two great-grandchildren! 

Today I worked my way through another list of household tasks such as supermarket shopping list writing, supermarket shopping, paying bills, online shopping, prescription ordering, hanging out the washing, bringing in the washing, staring at a spreadsheet (Mummy hazelh related finances), answering email, chatting with my sisters online and on the phone - and so on. Of course no work was done on the article :-( Meanwhile Mr hazelh has taken charge of delivering the car for a service and collecting it afterwards, and dealing with the boiler man who came to make an annual check of our equipment.

*If you would like to see a shot of hazelh as au pair with the babies, please check the extra.

Exercise today: 1 hour on the exercise bike; small amount of walking (~7k steps).