As covered previously we’ve had my French friend’s son, N, staying with us all week. N and Dan got on really well. They both love sport and playing fantasy card games so Daniel, Michael and N have spent the week on this sports course which Daniel and N loved and even Michael said wasn’t too bad. In the evenings they play cards. It involves relatively low levels of effort on my part when the boys get on so well.
One morning at breakfast I smiled fondly on Dan and N and said, “I’m so pleased to see you get on so well.” They nodded warily. “You know,” I said to them, “that N’s mother and I are friends from when we lived together in Brussels and we agreed that if we had children one day, we would exchange them?” They nodded wearily, this is a story that N’s mother and I have covered in some detail. “Well, do you think if someday you have children, you might swap them too?” There was a long pause and then Daniel said, “Mum, Mum, we’re thirteen.”