Herself was in Paris back in April – she had a wonderful time and the pressure is really on for us as E, her exchange, comes to Dublin in July. The trip was really good for her French as was demonstrated the other night: herself, myself and Mr. Waffle went out for dinner as the boys were away and she was about to go away, the French waitress could not understand a single thing I ordered from the (largely French) menu, on the other hand, she understood every word my daughter uttered and, at the end, was moved to say, “What a perfect accent.” If you have any exposure to French people, you will know that one of the things they are resolutely, and depressingly, unimpressed by is a foreigner’s ability to speak French. My work here is done.
We were talking about the Paris trip and herself mentioned that in every shop they went into they had to open their bags for inspection. I remember going to Belfast in the 90s and experiencing the bag checking thing, if you’d told me my daughter would have the same thing in Paris 25 years later, I would have been very surprised indeed; it’s all a bit “what are we bequeathing to our children?” isn’t it?