Parenting!!!
Many blogs are dedicated to the topic and, with all its rewards, it can be a pain in the butt; especially if you are on a mini-break in Paris without the teenage off-spring, and just trying to reconnect with romance and all that.......
I love flash fiction because a sustained narrative requires sustained effort and I am better in fits and starts.
So here's a piece of flash on the subject of Paris/Parenting et al
BAD SMELL
Sipping a
coup de champagne on a famous French boulevard, call comes
through from home.
Heart sink….
What now?
Bad smell
in the study.
Well, figure
it out!
Trace
source of bad smell- not rocket science!
Damned if
bad smell is going to
ruin weekend break in Paris
But, as we
join queue at the Glass Pyramid in
expectation of a glimpse of that
enigmatic smile, bad smell
envelops us.
Food left
to spoil by careless brother?
Dead mouse?
Or dare we venture?
Dead rat under
floor boards?
How long
does it take a dead rat to disintegrate?
And so it
scuttles around our ankles on the Ile de Saint Louis, circles the
gargoyles at Notre Dame,sneaks past
the bouquinistes along the banks of the Seine and imbibes
our every other coup de champagne in whatever rue we end up in.
Our
ubiquitous topic of conversation: rats turned
to plagues, bilboes big
as apples.
There are
of course the frequent updates by text.
Its stl ther
Cnt use
study
My mocks
start in 3 dz
When r
u bk?
And then
the arguments about our parenting skills-the younger
generation’s lack of initiative-
the infantalisation
of the modern teenager-how we in
our day would have sorted it out.
And so Paris and our romantic mini-break become
about offspring
and mostly
about parenting...
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