Tuesday 9 February 2016

Parenting and Mini-Breaks




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 one long whine about dead rats,
about offspring

and mostly about parenting...


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