Different strokes - France - page 143

ignominy of detaching an angry mod from his instrument. One can only hope that his day
improved after that but he looked very forlorn as he got off at the next stop.
Pierrot seemed in decent spirits when I eventually got home. His strokes, though apparently
less frequent, were horrible to witness. He would screech loudly, clearly in distress, and seek
comfort from us when they occurred, but in between times he actually seemed more active
than usual. It was difficult to know what to do for the best. The vet prescribed some more
drugs for him and maybe they helped a little, but while he was obviously in some physical
pain it was only brief and in between these bouts of torment he was actually more lively than
he had been for months. He was eating well, that was never an issue, and was even dry at
night, so we decided just to see how things panned out for a bit. Maybe the strokes would
stop and he would be fine or maybe we were just putting off the inevitable, but Toby wasn't
leaving his side for now so we agreed to just wait and see what happened next.
Despite worries over Pierrot, I was actually enjoying some unexpected time off at home and
intended to put this windfall to good use. Officially the reasons why we chose to move to the
Loire Valley are that Natalie had family here, the bucolic pace of life suits us and that it was
cheap. Also, and this wasn't necessarily uppermost in Natalie's thoughts at the time, the Loire
Valley represents the limit of what could be deemed acceptable Radio 4 Long Wave recep-
tion; it's about as far down as you can go in France and still listen to Test Match Special on a
crackly old portable radio.
I love cricket and if there is a downside to having relocated here it's that my children won't
get to play the game. There is a cricket club just a couple of hours from here in Saumur,
which counts occasional local resident Mick Jagger (yes, that one) among its membership,
but we didn't move here to join an expat community and actually the boys show very little
inclination to play the game, cricket having become synonymous with me lying in bed all day
moaning and being sick. The reason for this connection is that whenever I go to watch a Test
Match live I, er, over-indulge somewhat and spend the next day curled up in a foetal position,
whimpering like a puppy and occasionally asking death to 'Take me now'. Any debilitating
illness therefore, in which I am bedridden or obviously nauseous is greeted with the expres-
sion, 'Daddy's been to cricket again.' I am not then selling them the game's finer points.
Cricket is such an iconic symbol of 'Englishness' that it crops up regularly in the English-
language media over here, seemingly just to remind people of their roots. There was a report
in the English-language Connexion newspaper that cricket was to be 'taught' in 'some' primary
schools in France, which I'm not for at all. While I deplore the popularity of basketball here
(to my mind it's a sport that, more than any other, rewards physical freakery), trying to in-
troduce cricket into the French education syllabus is the kind of expat delusion that leads to
people exploring the possibility of opening a Greggs concession in the Dordogne. Can you
imagine the footstamping media outcry if a school in Kent were to introduce boules into the
curriculum?