where art collides

Dear Mrs Davies-Todd

On this last weekend of the holidays I find that I have time to pen you a missive. Holidays, as I am sure you are aware give us the time to mentally recuperate and therefore find the time to indulge in playful notes such as this.

This has been a good holiday. The first weekend was Easter weekend and we had Grandma, Grandad and Aunty Sarah to stay. This is, in my Dad’s words somewhat of a mixed blessing. We don’t really mind them coming but we are always glad when they go.

To illustrate the issue I can use our visit to Sian and Adrian’s over the back fence. We went around for an Easter Egg hunt and whilst we kids were hunting the grown ups were having a drink. Grandad was hugely surprised to the extent that he laughed afterwards that Sian offered a range of drinks including a variety of teas. Grandad’s experience was that at that time of morning one only offered coffee. Different generations!

Anyway you can imagine that this sort of thing compounded over a weekend makes for a sigh of relief when they eventually set off for home. The biggest difference in lifestyle is the fact that we are all up by 7 am (by 6 am the kids are in mum and dad’s bed). Having had breakfast well before the visitors get up it is then somewhat strange to go through the whole process again at around 9.30am and find that it is nearer 10.30 when everyone is ready to tackle the day.

After the departure of the Grandparents the family headed South to London for a few days of cultural activity. We stayed in the Regents Park Marriott Hotel which turned out to be a find. The hotel was conveniently near to Swiss Cottage Tube Station and in a very desirable area of London. Desirable that is until we arrived – no only joking of course.

We met with Mamgu, Tadcu, Aunty Mair and Aunty Sue on the first night. Also Jamie of Jamie and Janice swung by for a visit. We ended up eating in the hotel whereupon Tadcu picked up the bill. Mum and Dad were highly pleased with this.

Over the following three days we did Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Lion King (Mum and Hannah), a tour on the open top bus, Pizza Express, The London Eye, the Tower of London and London Zoo.

The Crown Jewels were genuinely amazing and on their own worth the entry to the Tower. The other amazing thing was the size of Henry XIII’s codpiece on his suit of armour. On the last night Mum and Dad had dinner in the hotel with Aunty Sue whilst we crashed out in the rooms.

On the Friday Dad drove us up the A1 to Welwyn train station and waved goodbye. He was flying to Seattle on Saturday whilst we wended our way back to Lincoln and reality. Unfortunately Mum forgot about the road works at Long Bennington which did delay us a little.

That’s all for now.

Tom

Dear Mr Jones,

Sorry to hear that you are still unwell. We hope and trust that you will undergo a full recovery and be back amongst us at William Farr School as soon as possible. This is particularly important as in your absence your lack of guidance for our young minds is affecting discipline and order in the classroom.

The class council has decided to rearrange the desks a little. This has been done because we found that at this time of year those of us sat at the back had the sun in our eyes for most of the afternoon. In consequence we have put your desk at the back and moved ourselves to the front, in effect rotating the classroom by 180 degrees. The council assumed that you would be ok with this because it was put to a democratic vote. In any case a decent pair of sun glasses would get round any problems you might have.

Moving the desks wasn’t too difficult and in fact hardly any of them were damaged in the process. Not as many as were damaged during the class party we held at the start of term in any case. Before you get excited and start laying blame it wasn’t our fault at all that the desks were broken during the party. In fact none of the damage would have happened if William Ward hadn’t discovered the process of distilling alcohol during chemistry lessons. Some of the kids were just not as used to hard drink as the rest of us. So it is not really anyone’s fault.

You will be pleased to know that we eventually moved the home brew out of the stock cupboard. It was starting to smell a bit anyway and got in the way of couples looking for a bit of privacy during the party. Some of us with responsible heads on our shoulders did make the effort to tidy up the cupboard the day after the party (the cleaner wouldn’t go near the classroom let alone the stock cupboard). I have to confess that we weren’t completely sure which inserts went with which folders but we had a pretty good stab at it so I imagine it will largely be ok.

I’m sure that you will agree it is also good news that Jane Smith’s pregnancy test proved to be negative. Imagine the worried looks on a number of the lads in the class over the past 2 – 3 weeks. Boy I tell you we aren’t going to have too many parties like that in one term.

On to more mundane things the new whiteboard is due to arrive next Monday and should be up on the wall before you come back. We wouldn’t have had a problem if William Ward hadn’t used permanent marker pens to write his poetry. Even then you could probably have worked around the verses – they only took up half the space on the board. The Headmaster suggested, however, that some of the words were a bit on the strong side and might confuse some of the younger kids who might happen to pass by the classroom and read the whiteboard through the door. Creative individual that he may be, spelling was never one of William’s strengths, and the poem was all in all probably not worth keeping on display.

Fair play to William he is always ready to admit when he has made an error of judgement and he did try to rectify the problem. He found, though, that using white gloss paint didn’t work out and in fact the resultant collateral damage to the polished wood floor from the splash-back from the paint roller was not really a desirable outcome. Again to William’s credit he did bring in a rug from home to cover the spot where the paint has stuck. His mother was a bit annoyed at losing here best rug but it just goes to show you can’t please everybody.

She should be glad that Jane Smith didn’t sue William for damages following the accident she had when she slipped on the rug and went flying into the classroom window. Jane herself was partly to blame because she ran into the classroom in careless jubilation having just had the results of her pregnancy test. The Headmaster has very generously said that the cost of replacing the glass in the window can be covered by their insurance policy and that Jane could take the rest of the term off to give her injuries a chance to heal. I think she is in a ward quite close to yours at the hospital so you two might be able to get together for a chinwag when she gets a bit more mobile.

Well Mr Jones that’s it for now I think.

Get well soon,

Tom

Dear Mr Jones

What can I say. Here we are on holiday again, a cosy family unit ensconsed in villa number 31 at Center Parcs, and dehors le deluge as they would have said in Brittany. Perhaps our family motto should be “Avec Nous Le Deluge”.

As we were walking to the Sub-Tropical Swim Paradise yesterday Dad actually remarked that if we had been in Brittany we wouldn’t have been doing anything so namby pamby as going to an indoor swimming pool. We would have been stripping off at a beach with true British fortitude, or perhaps stupidity as the French might have put it.

Although a villa at Center Parcs is a step up from a mobile home in Brittany it still shares some of the characteristics. Namely the noise of the rain on the flat roof at night wakes you up and from Dad’s perspective the noise levels from us cooped up kids also becomes intolerably high. Even if there is no noise from the kids this is compensated for by the noise from the TV, that being the one way to keep the kids quiet. Except of course when they can’t agree on what to watch or one of them has possession of the remote control and annoys the others by flicking around the channels without prior agreement.

Old John is still in the unfortunate position of having to wear a sling on his right arm after the broken collarbone incident of two weekends ago. He stayed out of the pool on the first day. Either Mum or Dad stayed with him and Dad to a certain extent made a rod for his own back because on that first day he took John to the pool café for a drink. The next day John didn’t want Mum to look after him on the obvious premise that he was more likely to get another trip to the café with Dad. In the end Dad ended up taking him into the pool with his sling on much to Mum’s quite natural concern. The upshot of it all was that the sling was soaked and in fact inadvertently left behind at the pool when we departed.

That was yesterday. Yesterday was actually a fairly action packed day starting with badminton in the morning, ten pin bowling after lunch and, following a stint in the pool, I went to “Football Camp” where, in the rain, the only difference between football and the swimming was that I got dirtier playing football. Wetness was a prominent feature of both activities.

Dad and I went out last night to watch Liverpool play Deportivo in the Champions League. It ended a very disappointing nil nil draw. Dad always says he can’t understand the attraction of football. There are never very many goals involved. Unlike cricket or rugby (typically) or even golf for that matter.

On our way home we stopped off at Chez Pierre, the Parc’s French bistro, for a nightcap. To Dad’s disbelief they only had one brandy, and that was a cheap one at that. He couldn’t imagine a French bistro with half an ounce, or even a gram, of credibility not having a reasonable selection of brandies. He also reflected upon a number of associated thoughts: namely that the French bistro was staffed entirely by locals from nearby Ollerton (our waitress’ name was Sharon, or Shaz as the receipt indicated) and that there we no persons of Asian origin in sight at the Rajinder Pradesh curry house across the Market Square from Chez Pierre. Equally I doubt that the Mediterranean restaurant (pizza), the American food joint or the top French fine dining restaurant were staffed by the relevant nationals. None of this of course takes anything away from the excellent leisure product that the owners of Center Parcs have put together for our enjoyment. You just can’t please all of the people all of the time.

Dad and I had a hot chocolate sat outside under the stars (clouds and drizzle actually) being kept warm by the patio heaters positioned near to every table. We enjoyed ourselves.

When we got home Mum was still up watching the television but after a short while we called it a fairly action packed day.

Dear Mr Jones,

Hello. Le Soleil ne brillait pas. Sorry to go on a bit about the weather but it has been somewhat uppermost in our minds. Actually I am not being completely fair. The soleil in reality does brillait this morning. It is one of those rare mornings where we can sit out doing nothing but relaxing as one is supposed to do whilst on holiday in Brittany.

Yesterday we went to visit the Wards at their campsite near Quimperle and Dad and Alistair spent the afternoon drinking the local plonk whilst us kids hit the pool and the water slides. The Wards, in an attempt to get him to learn French have renamed William, Guillame. Don’t be surprised therefore when we return to school that you may well have to change the class register from W Ward to G Ward. You might of course, being a German language teacher, elect to persuade William to keep his original initial and call himself Wilhelm. I don’t think he has particularly strong views or any strong attachment to the French version. I leave this to you to decide.

We had a bit of a drama on the way home. It was quite late before we set off from the Wards campsite. Mum was driving and the petrol warning light had come on. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem because there were two 24 hour petrol stations nearby. However French petrol machines don’t seem to like British credit cards and we found that whilst our credit was good we were unable to pay for the fuel. French petrol stations being unmanned at that time of night therefore meant that we couldn’t actually get any petrol. Oh!

Not to worry said Dad and he promptly rang the international AA. He had just joined before going on holiday at the enormous rip off expense of £155 for 1 year’s membership to insure against this very possibility.

No problem said the voice on the other end of the phone. You just carry on driving and when you run out of petrol just give us a call and we will have assistance to you in 45 minutes or so. Great said Dad. That was clearly £155 well spent – not!

In the meantime Mum, who being the designated driver and had therefore not been drinking, spotted someone filling up at the service station and persuaded them to pay for our petrol with their credit cards in exchange for cash. Phew as they say in France. At least that’s what I imagine they would say as phew seems to be an universally accepted exclamation. They may spell it differently and emphasise it differently, though I doubt the latter, but say it I’m sure they do.

We made it home after the camp guards had put up the shutters for the night so we parked outside the perimeter fence and making full use of World War 2 raiding techniques stepped over the low chain fence and walked to the mobile home and bed.

I mention World War 2 because it is a hot topic here at the moment being the 60th Anniversary of the liberation of France. Vive la Republique, vive l’Entente Cordiale!? It gets nearly as many column inches (pardon monsieur, centimetres) as the Olympics which are on in Athens at the moment. Particularly annoying as whilst the British are doing better medalwise than perhaps they expected, the French are doing even better – zut alors.