Cardboard is the new baby wipe.....

---

This holiday seems to be getting weirder/more ridiculous by the day. Yesterday we went for a nice lunch in foix, sitting at an outside restaurant (empty add it was so cold and normal people were inside) with a view of the castle, pigeons to keep Seth occupied and a nice pizza, an English women contented on how she hadn't expected to hear an English voice, we chuckled politely and kept on eating. Ash then went all distant and thoughtful (rare) and turned to the woman and asked if she was a maths teacher (I thought the pizza had gone to his head) turns out that the woman and her husband not only taught Ash they also both once worked at the school we work at, live in the next village and are good friends with people we know. First an old maths teacher colleague on the boat and now this. Pretty scared I'm going to bump into my old maths teacher coming out of somewhere dodgy in Amsterdam at this rate! After a slightly damp walk round, we headed home to drain a hot tub (not a euphemism) and make some effort to pack up. It was a very poor effort. Some cleaning was done, some packing was done but mostly it was trying to teach the boy to say words and not eat things off the floor.
We regretted that today when, the aim to leave at ten changed to an aim to leave in the am. Seth decided to both throw up on me and poop on me (this is my life now) which delayed things a tad as did a couple of arguments with fly papers, a too damp hot tub and wet washing. Finally though, we managed to leave almost in the am! The journey started strange with a massive bin bag of recycling on my lap, swiftly disposed of. It got normal, eating up the miles until a rest stop at which Seth pulled out his usual bag of tricks to flirt with yet another pretty blond four year old little girl. It got ridiculous when I turned to find Seth with an empty cardboard chocolate wrapper with a chunk bitten out of it and said chunk in his mouth. A quick prod and it was out, Ash was confused, Seth was crying and I was questioning life. We were heading for the aquarium in Montpellier. We found the general area really easily but then it all went wrong. Firstly we were confused by barriers. Secondly we were confused by a nun on a small hill next to a McDonald's with a suitcase by her side and staring straight at us . (It was the lack of singing that baffled us most I think) Thirdly we were confused by a zebra with two legs (actually just a strangely thin boy in matching zebra print top and leggings but weird none the less). In our confusion we headed not for the car park but for the longest, most inescapable MacDonalds drive in queue ever for a MacDonalds we neither wanted nor had time to eat. The nun was staring, the zebra was cantering in front of us and we were stuck. I ordered the cheapest things I could without seeming like we were lost..... In a drive in.... And five euros later we were out and trying to find the car park. Again. After all that, when we got to the Aquarium, the entry fee of close to twenty Euros each for what would only be a forty five minute trip seemed a bit much and we confused Seth by going straight back to the car! A mercifully short time later, having made it to the hotel, the baby was in bed and we decided to get onto the balcony and drink our wine, have some snacks and enjoy the warm Mediterranean air. Except the wine was a corkscrew bottle (no corkscrew)the warm air was cold and the wind ferocious enough to blow the crisps onto the floor. Ash ate floor crisps, I drank water and we sat and shivered, laughing at ourselves, until the temptation of silent athletics (baby sleeping = no noise, even breathing) on the TV was enough to draw us in!

---