Days of Summer

I know quarantine is necessary but unfortunate for everyone coming back from their holidays in France. It reminded me that a few years ago Darren misfuelled the car, and we had to spend 2 extra nights in Rouen – which was a city half way back to the ferry – waiting for a man with some angry barking dogs to fix it. I had to negotiate it all with a combination of smiling nicely and stilted sentences remembered from GCSE French in 1990. Meanwhile Darren smoked fags on the hard shoulder, the 12 year old screamed because she couldn’t cope with the change of plan, and the 7 year old cuddled a Disney Tigger whilst trying to pretend he was OK when he clearly wasn’t either.

The only glimmer of light during the entire fiasco was when my other man (Hugh Grant) retweeted my underpants to 250,000 people. The orders we got off the back of his retweet meant I was at least confident of a strong sales week upon our return to Blighty – if we ever got back to the UK that was – and the man with the horrible dogs hadn’t driven off in our car. It was a battered Passat Estate though, so I was sadly confident it would be returned to us and, as expected, there it was by Monday lunchtime – all ready for collection and free of petrol.

The extra two days in Rouen however also brought a moment where I stood in the tower where Joan of Arc was tried and sentenced to death whilst my children ransacked the gift shop (like the children of other parents I used to judge before I had kids of my own) and I thought, ‘Deb, you’re OK really. You’ve had steak and chips for lunch and in your armoury you’ve got Où est la gare?, Je voudrais beaucoup de vin rouge, s’il vous plait and Mon marie s’appelle Hugh. It’s all doable. You just have to take a massive deep breath, pull up your big girl pants and crack on, don’t you? Also, loads of people aren’t watching you getting burned to death so that’s good too.’

Now I have to swing the blog round to trying to sell you stuff in the vague hope that one day we can return to France. Preferably to the south of it and by Learjet rather than Brittany by Passat… mind you, I bet you can’t stuff as many bottles of €5 vin rouge under the wheel arches of the Learjet, can you? Hahaaa! *taps nose*

Anyway, the code SUMMER15 will still give you 15% off including our lovely boxer shorts (as well as a free face mask on all orders over £30), so get in there before the sale ends.