One of the worst things about living in an expatriate bubble is that almost everyone leaves in the end. When you are in your 20s this is great as the converse is also true and you have a constant supply of new friends pitching up and that makes up for the pain of departures and also, as you will be aware, the childfree can travel at the drop of a hat so they friends are not really gone, they’re just establishing new locations for short breaks.
In your 30s, you don’t make as many new friends. Some friends are decamping to Stockholm on Wednesday and I am gutted. I think it’s time we thought seriously about decamping ourselves.
In other gloom, I came home yesterday to find the Princess parked in front of the telly on the couch and the boys peering fixedly at it from their playpen and the childminder nowhere to be seen. In fact she was in the bedroom folding clothes. I know I might well do the same after a day with three children, I know it has never happened before, I know that it is nice to come home to a tidy house (and also mildly miraculous given the odds that C has to battle against) but it was a depressing little tableau.
Finally, we were chatting to the Princess about school and asked her who she slept beside for her nap and she said “Ines” and then she said “she doesn’t like me, she says ‘t’es pas mon ami'”. “I have no friends”, she continued sadly “at school nobody wants to be my friend”. Alas.
