40 ain’t so bad after all.

For 10 years now one of my wisest and dearest friends – she who shall be known as the Toxic Tester – hasn’t let me forget that I didn’t have a party for my 30^th birthday. Instead I fled a grey, damp and December-thickened Manchester to go climbing with my young man in the sunshine. Toxic Tester didn’t come along, I think at the time she was one of my rare friends to have a serious power shoulders job and anyway we didn’t invite anyone else to join in the loved up birthday fest. So, this time round I couldn’t get away with quietly slipping into maturity could I?

Inspired by the Queen I’ve had 2 parties – one with French friends and one with British friends. There are some things that don’t translate. Never mind the language barrier there’s the party barrier. Both parties were fun, but boy were they different.

With my lovely French friends, we had a fantastic meal, with long courses, interesting discussion, word games and a fabulous range of food. We all talked and remained seated until 2.30am. Now this was considered a fine evening by all concerned. Between 12 of us, we drank the giddy total of 4 bottles of wine, including the champagne. Girls were giggling after a wee tot of wine and boys were definitely red-nosed and handsome after quaffing whole glasses. Dignity was maintained and nobody lost their pants.

One week later the British arrived.

We hired a chateau (well the outhouses) for the weekend, lost in the Herault hills and surrounded by the leafy beauty of the Cevennes foothills. Its undulating stone walls, vaulted ceilings and enormous fireplace, large enough to roast an ox, were our playpen for a few days. But this was nothing compared to the people that filled it. All my favourite people were there; our children and people I love. They all came for the weekend, by plane and by car, just for the party. I’m still suffering from utter emotional overload and just how monumentally cool the whole weekend was.

Of course I made some of them cycle with me – it would be rude to let them have fun all the time wouldn’t it – and apart from the icicles, verglas and itchy triggered hunters it was swoosh-tastic outing. Others walked, others climbed but we all did hearty exercise to prepare for the evening’s feasting. Toxic Tester even dived out into the morning chill for her morning run – this is hardcore executive action.

I’ll be brief, but needless to say that more that 4 bottles of wine were drunk and we didn’t play interesting word games. We kicked off with a wine tasting of some of the great wines of Pic Saint Loup – not a cheap apero but now I’ve tasted some of those wines I’ve longed to try for ages. And do you know what. A 42euro bottle of wine doesn’t taste 10 times better than those 4euro bottles we all pick, but it does taste pretty damn good. Must find out if anyone had that guaranteed orgasm though.

Dancing, prancing and preening until 4.30am with people I love (there I go again) is a mighty fine way to start being 40. Although it will take me weeks to recover – must be a sign of age.

How to get a ride in a ambulance

If I was sensible I wouldn't have done what I did this weekend, but I'm not so I did!

After a week of a heavy cold, sleepless nights (daughter#2 is wetting the bed and then keeping us up) and lots of work type stuff I should have had a nice relaxing weekend. Breakfast in bed, good meals and lots of healthy family time. After all everyone is trashed by the rentree lunacy it seems.

But no, at 5am on Sunday I got up to leave for a Cyclotouriste event. The touriste bit makes it sounds easy, it is, but only for the organisers. They dont' have to time us and let us set off when we want, without the whole sheebang of a mass racing start. The pedalling bit is just as hard.

So with probably not enough food inside me - it's hard to eat at 5am - I got to Carpentras and set off on the Velocio, or 110km including the hard way up Mont Ventoux. There are 3 ways up - there's hard (from Sault), really hard (from Bedoin) or really really hard (from Maulucene). And guess which one, well of course, we took the really really route. This was after we had already done one Col (de la Madeleine, the other one) and 2 hours of cycling... am I building this up enough....

I knew it would be hard, but I hadn't really considered just how mind drainingly hard it would be. I've cycled up big hills before, but Ventoux, is unrelentingly painful. There is one soul destroying section at 10%, steepness, which is the sort of steepness that accomplished skiers love swishing down. Instead I was trying to pedal up. I won't bore you with the details, I suppose it was self inflicted and it was just a question of pedalling, but at times I was having trouble cycling at walking pace.

And the problem with a road that steep is that you can't get off the bike - you're going so slowly that you can't unclip your shoes from the pedals and you know that there is no way that you'd ever be able to get moving again. You can not stop, or else you know that you will have to walk the rest of the way. Nobody goes to Ventoux wanting to walk it. It's just one big fat challenge, waiting to slap you down.

Ventoux has an aura. The way it's stubbornly sitting above the Provencal plain with just the frippery of Les Dentelles nearby for mountain company tells you that it's there by force of its will, and not by the laws of nature. The sun blasted top, when you round a final corner coming of the forest is frightening sight - especially when you know that you have to cycle up that zigzag of a road, clinging to the scree slopes. The mist swirling about the summit just added to its rearing dominance

I didn't stop on the way up. I made the 2 hours of continual plugging away on the pedals, with my back screaming at me and my feet feeling like knives were carving pedal marks into them. But when I stopped so did everything else.

I passed out while I tried to get off my bike. Luckily I was caught by incredible friends from my bike club. It's only now I feel a complete idiot, but I'm pathetically grateful they were there to help me, call the ambulance, organise getting my bike down, waiting for me at the hospital and then bringing my home. So now I just woozy and feeling sheepish. But I dont' actually regret the experience, I got up the thing, and pushed myself further than ever before. It's kind of sick fun. And I got to descend Ventoux with 2 ambulancemen, 1 oxygen mask and a blaring siren. Not bad for a Sunday outing.

So the moral of the story... Ventoux is bigger and badder than me.

Anyone seen a school door?

It’s that time of year when us house-bound folk/freelance workers start bleeding tears for the schools to reopen. Summer is too long, too hot and two children.

Next week the cherubs will be #1 Starting CP and #2 Starting school. I have no worries for their sanity, my main fears come from not actually knowing where the school door is. This is not as daft as it sounds I promise. I’ve done the round of 10 other Frenchie parents and we’re all the same. So come La Rentrée we will all be milling around in front of the 2 possible doors and following anyone who looks like they know what they are doing. We’ve also guessed that the children will need a large bag to carry all the homework, but that’s as good as it gets, even from the teacher parents amongst us.

This is insane and I seem to be the only person bothered by this laissez-faire attitude to school. Call me fussy (Hello Fussy) but is it too much to ask to actually know where your child is going to school? In a weeny village like this, where the Ecole Maternelle, CP and CM and all those other letters that make up schooling are housed together, the inscription is done automatically from one section to the other, without me having to lift a finger. Except I did. I suffer from curiosity, which seems to be as welcome as rabies.

I phoned the CP Headmistress, except I couldn’t talk to her as there was a stubborn old goat-man who wouldn’t let me book a meeting with her. ‘Do you have a specific questions Madame?” was his line. No not really, I just want to know where the door to the school is, what you expect my daughter to be equipped with and how the system works. “Don’t worry yourself, just present your daughter at the door and you will see just how the system works very well”

But where is the door? “Ah Madame you will see on the day’ !!

This leads me to believe that in fact Daughter#1 is going to school in the Magic Faraway Tree and come the day a swirling cloud of French academia will descend upon our confused heads as we hunt for the mythical school door. All will be revealed as Moonface comes along with Silky the Fairy, dodging Dame Washalot’s water, and we climb the ladder. Well maybe...

I am awesome!

There are advantages to being female… pink, chocolate, the right to play the hormonal card and all those beloved clichés. However the best has got to be in this cycling game. Not only are there very few women prepared to get on their bike and pedal, and pedal and pedal (arguably, they are more intelligent than that) but even fewer brave a few drops of rain.

Alright lots of rain, and over 4 hours of it but still, if that’s what it takes to win a cup, then I’m game. For that’s what happened last Sunday blog chums, I won a cycle race. Or rather I won La Speciale, 120km at Montagnac (google that if you don't believe me). How chocolate deservingly awesome is that... I was the first female and first in my category….

.... detail time.... So what if only one other woman finished the race (way behind me, and no I didn’t scatter nails on the ground to puncture her tyres) and so what if there was (ehem) only one woman in my category, err me. I still won, got up on stage and held my shiny cup proudly. And why not, after all the weather was so bad that half the field didn’t turn up and of those that started the race half gave up after 40kms.

So this is my secret weapon on the bike. It’s not that I have awesome thighs of power (not), it’s not that I am a feather weight athlete (err, very not) it’s all about growing up in the UK and not minding rain. In fact I much prefer cycling in rain to the beating, blood boiling heat, which we should have had.

Now, come the Cycl’Aigoual on June 15, when the sun shines as I sweat my way up Mont Aigoual, the only cup I shall come near winning will be the lantern rouge. Bet, hey who cares. Tis fun this game of wheels.

The voice of ART

Well, life on the lotissement is getting all arty. I’ve been quiet (as usual you lazy blogger I hear you cry) on café and marmite, as I’ve been necking the real stuff in vast quantities to keep me going. You see, for once I’ve been blown away by work. Marvellous.

But the oddest of my odd-job has been today’s experience. I was met at the artist’s entrance of Montpellier’s Corum and guided into the depths of this monstrous temple to performance, past the village-people installing the latest gigantesque scenery and down further to a hushed little corridor. Then, locked into a padded cell of my own. No, I haven’t finally been recognised as the loony I’m often taken for, but hired as a voice of a generation. Or rather, an English voice of a certain range, certain accent and certain cheap-to-hireness. Yup, I am the voice of Courbet.

For all you art and blog fans – and there must be, oh at least two of you – scurry along to the musée Fabre this summer for their blockbuster expo. Then hire the audioguide… then take it back and hire the one in English… and there, whispering into your ears will be me. I can’t honestly say I understood what I was talking about, but it’s art so you’re not meant to. Just nod, fold your hands behind your back and look out for shocked old ladies. This ain’t neat and pretty impressionism.

Forgive my stutterings over Richelieu, Fourirists and sensual sensuous sensuality. It’s been a long time since I’ve read anything more than Enid Blyton out loud. The very patient and charming sound engineer promised that he could cut things together to make it sound almost like English. My voice was converted into blue waves on his computer which he was cleverly slicing together. Yes I do mean to sound all Doris Day about technology; after all I’m still getting over USB keys and wondering why the paper doesn’t fall out of them…

And of course, for an enormous, huge and staggeringly diamond infested fee I will give private performance to anyone and anywhere

Are you game?

200 seems to be a key part of this cycling lark. Before a big outing I get to eat 200g of pasta - do you know how big the mountain range of 200g dry weight of pasta cooks up to be, it’s frightening.. and then on the morning along comes 200g of oats, washed down with 200 cups of coffee, or thereabouts… All this before the 200km of the day. Yep, being a true sucker for pain I’ve done my first 200km in preparation for the 11 hills and 216km of the Ardechoise on June 21. A cycle ‘race’ that the whole department will take part in, in an outlandish display of Frenchie All-for-oneness. Think of those oddballs that actually watch the Tour de France having picked their spot days before and then think larger.

Whole villages will dress themselves up in garish costumes with a tenuous link to previous histories and hand out regional delights – pass the saucisson Gaston this one’s got a puncture – to the thousands and thousands of sweating Behemoths cycling past them, or dribbling past depending on the heat, the speed and the after effects of too much saucisson Bernard.

Meanwhile back to those 200km. I know this is a dumbo thing to say, but it takes a seriously long time. Quicker by bus, via Luton and back to the Languedoc methinks. But it didn’t help that for once there was someone slower than me on the hills so I had the perverse delight of waiting for someone at the top. Alas this now means that I don’t have a friend to cycle with me for the Ardechoise. She's simply too slow - this is a novel sensation chez moi. Alas she has already lined up a dandy super-fit chap to pace her, so all I need now is a super-fit dandy chap ready to pace me, madame. Is anyone out there game?

And another meanwhile… Meanwhile back in the world of a 30something. What is it about 50 somethings? What drugs are they on? They’re dandy, packed full of cash and plump full of more energy than me. I can’t wait to be that old

Cevenol cycles

There’s something funny about the Cevennes. All that wide open space and mountain air makes people do odd things. After all, why else would I have accepted to spend the weekend wearing lycra and pedaling up hills until my lungs screamed for air, my heart rate exceeded its logical maximum and my muscles had to thrash through the pain. And why else would I have been dancing until midnight with a group chaps and chapesses. All this, and without a single glass of wine. Oh the purity of the long-distance cyclist!

The bike club annual weekend ‘stage’ in the hills is about getting ready for the cyclosportive season ahead and having some fun, all of the very healthy variety. Of course, this being a French club the food and route planning are fastidiously and deliciously well organised. As we huffed (well me at least) around the 5 hours of hill torture we had a voiture balai following our every crank and filled with chocolate, coffee and pain d’epice, readily scoffed at any any opportunity.

Of course, that the car was driving by a man wearing a full back brace thanks to crashing at high speed on a Spanish cycling trip shouldn’t put you off. Nor should the bandages on the other chap, the scars on that young girl’s face after landing head first off her bike and of course neither should that man with no feeling in his feet thanks to nerve damage. You see, cycling is all very good for the health…

The only downside of a weekend in the Cevennes? Having to listen while a group of folk ranted about the number of English folk buying houses here while not being to speak French and using only English speaking builders, lawyers, whatevers… They didn’t know I was nearby so let rip pretty fully. Someone came out with that cliché that at least foreigners are looking after the houses and doing them up. To which came the vitriolic rely – it’s cheaper to let the houses rot than pay the medical bills of all those retired people and watch house prices rocket. Cripes, they’re probably right.

I shamefacedly shrunk away back to my friends. Sometimes it’s not great being British here and I fear that the time is coming ripe for a backlash against the number of anglo-immigrants. Money is getting tighter and the tempers shorter.