Bon Anniversaire

It’s been snowing pretty much everywhere else so avid readers won’t be surprised to learn that it has been snowing at Chateau Coldspot too. The Princesses briefly forgot that they were teenage lounge-lizards, pulled woolly hats on over their tiaras and dashed out to throw snowballs. It was minus eight this morning when I went out to defrost the Spanish Peugeot. Fortunately, el automobila seems to be coping quite well with the un-Mediterranean weather. The worst thing is that the goats and the sheep are still here. I phoned M Cazeau to find out where he had got to, but he claimed he was snowed in up a mountain, had been without electricity for two days and had been forced to call out the fire brigade to bring up water for the his existing goats. He promises he will come Wednesday, assuming he has managed to dig himself out.
Unfortunately Princess 1’s two best friends had chosen this weekend to throw their joint eighteenth birthday party. This was held, as so many of their parties have been before, at the local village hall. This is a misnomer; the hall is not in fact, in the village, but is perched beside a very large, very deep reservoir. My biggest fear with these occasions is that someone will wander drunkenly outside and unwittingly fall in. This being France, no one else considers this to be a possibility.
Because everything starts (and finishes) so late here in le Midi, parties never really end the day they begin. Everyone, of course, drinks a vast amount, so nobody is fit to drive and as the hall is in the middle of nowhere, no one has any possibility of getting home. The solution is obvious only to the under twenties; bring a sleeping bag and kip on a table, a chair, or if desperate, on the floor. No parents are around to monitor these sleep-ins (no one can face volunteering to stay) and of course, no sleeping actually takes place. It is simply a way of passing the last couple of hours before dawn.
For a long time I resisted Princess 1’s demands to be allowed to ‘stay all night’ and insisted on fetching her home at ‘a respectable time’. Apparently this was totally unreasonable.
When she got a little older she was permitted to come back on her scooter as long as: a friend was returning with her; she was back no later than 2am and woke me up to tell me she was home; and (it goes without saying) had absolutely nothing to drink.
Eventually, after lengthy battles, I succumbed to her nagging and she was allowed to stay all night. She returned the following morning complaining of exhaustion.
‘Boring anyway,’ she said, looking tired, ill and distinctly un-princess-like.
‘Really?’ I had always imagined sleeping in an unheated village hall would be absolutely riotous.

Ever since then she has preferred, where possible, to come home. And she did so on this occasion, having found someone who hadn’t drunk (too) much and was practically passing our front door (or at least the end of the very long drive).
You'll be relieved to learn that despite the weather, the party was a success and there was a lot of mess the following day – always a good indicator.

During her junior teenage years, Princess 1 tried to persuade me that this excessively liberal approach to parties was normal amongst French parents. Having always thought the French to be most particular about guarding their daughters, I was astonished by this. However, it did seem to be the case in her immediate circle and so although she faced more restrictions than her friends, she was nevertheless allowed a great deal of freedom to roam locally. I have since become acquainted with a wider range of parents, including some who live in nearby Grande Ville, and have learnt that, unsurprisingly, this level of tolerance is not the general rule at all.
It appears that this sheltered corner of France, tucked into the belly of the hills, les parents-paysans take a more robust approach, approaching child-rearing with approximately the same mindset as sheep-rearing. Consequently both species are permitted to run amok all over the mountains and it must be said that it doesn’t seem to do any of them much harm!