We flew back to France on the 30th Dec. With a mid afternoon flight, it was meant to be an easy day of travel but the change in the travel rules meant that I spent two days getting all the testing and paperwork in order to get back into France; on the morning of the flight, Iain and I had to go to Glasgow Airport at 8am for our pre-departure antigen tests; the Ryanair desks at Edinburgh Airport were full of stressed and ill-prepared passengers, and ill-tempered staff; and the landing at Toulouse was automated due to some of the worst fog I've ever seen. I don't think I've ever been so happy to get home to my own house. I've already said it to Iain: I'm not flying abroad again until all of this is over.
 |
| Glasgow Airport Pre-Departure Testing Centre |
 |
| Pure relief that we'd done everything necessary to board the flight |
 |
| Bienvenue à Toulouse! |
 |
| Home. YAAAAAAAAAAAAS. |
 |
| And relax... |
We got up on the Friday morning - Hogmanay - to find that Santa had been, again! What an amazing start to our 48hrs in quarantine! It was actually really brilliant and almost felt like we were having an actual Christmas Day. All that extra planning had certainly been worth it. William was so excited with his Lego Aeroplane that he just lay down on the floor in pure joy. It was really hilarious. We spent the morning opening gifts and our Auchan delivery arrived around 11am so we were able to spend the rest of the day eating, drinking playing and relaxing. Merry Christmas #2!
It wouldn't be Christmas without some new loungewear...
Dinner. Not playing games tonight, Matthew...
Special mention also needs to go to our unexpected visitors of the day: the local constabulary! I couldn't believe that they actually turned up to check we were sticking to our quarantine. Mental. Weirdly, I got all flustered but they were actually really lovely and ended up just blethering to us about why we were living here in Pau, if we had a stand alone house (with parking?), where William went to school... They left as friends! We were still a bit shocked though and so very thankful that we had rigidly stuck to the rules. Phew!
Although we were playing it as Christmas, the rest of the world was celebrating New Year. We managed to stay up for the French bells but headed up to bed not long after. As predicted, the folk through the wall started with the ridiculously loud music at something like 5am. Bit off, tbh. Iain pulled the pin and went down to the spare room but I gutsed it out and managed to get back to sleep until William came bowling in at his usual time. Lack of sleep, combined with the celebrating from the previous day meant that the 1st was typically slow. Eurgh. We were actually quite thankful that we were still under house arrest as it meant we couldn't feel guilty at staying in and keeping things slow. Fortunately, William had all his new toys to keep him busy and we also dipped in and out of many a movie and tv show. Happy New Year.
Under other timeframes, we would have been able to test out on the Saturday, but it was Ne'er's Day so everywhere was closed. Fast forward a further 24hrs and we found ourselves on a Sunday. Again, everywhere shut. Monday finally rolled round and we'd made appointments for tests at the pharmacy. As predicted, we were negative so William was able to get back to school in the afternoon. It felt good to be back out and about again and he was definitely happy to be heading back. Iain and I went for a big walk around the chateau park, just to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air after being stuck indoors for days. I had a physio appointment in the afternoon (point of note: my back seemed to fix itself almost overnight once we got back to France and all the stress had subsided!) and Geoffrey seemed to think that things were actually okay. Thank God.
Tuesday saw us getting into a proper routine again. Out for a big walk after the school run, jobs lists, life admin. It felt good. Wednesday was similar. It's just been good to come up for air after the madness of Scotland. On Thursday, Iain went for a run after drop off but I've been mindful of my back so it was a short walk along the boulevard, taking in the absolutely incredible winter weather before heading back to the school to take up my morning duties as parent helper on the swimming trip. I was a bit nervous about how it was going to work but I actually had a really great morning. The kids are all so funny and one of the parents (Max) had really great english so I spent most of the morning blethering to him. William was (rightly) very proud of himself as the instructors put him in the beginners group and he was almost immediately moved up a set. He just loves being in the water - I wish we could find him a group to swim with on a Wednesday too. Humph. We'd told William that we would get on the big wheel before they took it down and arranged to go on the Thursday afternoon, post guardarie. The timing and the weather was simply perfect and he absolutely loved it.
Thursday morning:
Iain and I had talked about maybe going out for dinner on Friday night as a belated anniversary celebration but I felt like I kind of limped into the weekend, sleeping solidly every night yet getting tireder and tireder every day so we felt that going out for dinner might be sort of wasted on me. By Saturday I needed to go back to bed in the afternoon for a nap (unheard of!) so felt that covid test was probably in order. Negative. Probably just the come down from the trip. We laid low for much of the weekend which kind of went hand in hand with the awful rain that had rolled in but Claire Whitelock texted me out of the blue, late on Sunday morning to say that her and Luke had made a late call to head to Le Berry for lunch if we fancied it. It was exactly what we needed! Great food, bit of socialising, two and a half hour lunch. And we even managed to stay off the booze. Just great.
First week: done. Back to France; back to reality.
Lorna.
No comments:
Post a Comment