Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
'Oh,' she said, 'why?'
I'm definitely with the French on this one. The proliferation of 'celebration' days just to sell
more cards is ridiculous; birthdays are understandable, Father's Day and Mother's Day toler-
able, Grandparent's Day laughable and things like Secretary's Day utterly risible. No doubt
in the Hallmark head office they're constantly sending each other cards congratulating them-
selves on such a preposterously successful wheeze. The cards that are on offer in French
shops are pretty thin on the ground and pretty ropy too, but we have an English background,
so saying to your wife on her birthday that you didn't get her a card because you couldn't find
one simply doesn't wash. Believe me, I've tried.
In hindsight, though, I did outdo myself. I spent ages in Super U trying to choose the damn
things, but after a while you just become card blind and all judgement (what little I have in
these matters) flies out of the window. For instance, Natalie's card appeared to have traffic
lights on it, glittery traffic lights, and a picture of the kind of flowers that give flora a bad
name - garish, gaudy things like inbred orchids from the wrong side of the tracks; the kind of
flowers that would wear a low-cut top while working behind a bar, all wrinkly décolletage.
Samuel's was worse.
He was on the cusp of his early teens, a mature and sensible boy, serious-minded beyond his
tender years, but he was on that rickety bridge between being a little boy and thinking he's an
adult. As a result, choosing his card was always going to be a thorny issue. I didn't want to
patronise him with pictures of clowns and balloons but neither did I want to weigh him down
with images of champagne flutes and ties. I thought I'd chosen well; he'd recently developed
serious computer skills, making his own films and uploading them to YouTube and so on, so
I thought a laptop-themed card was ideal. It was only when I got it home that I realised that a
picture of an early, massive laptop with an obviously adult hand hovering over the keyboard
actually suggested a 'Beware of Predatory Grown-Ups on the Internet' campaign rather than
being a 'Hey! It's Your Birthday!' effort.
In the end though, none of it really mattered.
As usual, I had January 4 all planned: Samuel and Maurice would be at school until late
afternoon and Natalie and I were to have lunch and spend the day with Thérence trawling
various garden centres. I was in the kitchen that morning and I heard Natalie screaming down
to me that Toby was barking. I didn't think anything of it as Toby, when not being constantly
surprised by his own tail, barks a lot - I just assumed it was the postman arriving. I went out
to find Toby in something of a state and Natalie shouting from a first-floor window that one
of the cats had been hit by a car, but that she didn't know which one or where it was. I found
the poor cat by our own car near the gate and it had clearly been hit so hard that it had been
thrown almost back to the house. I could see no obvious signs of injury, though, and the poor
thing was still breathing so I ran off to get its bed to rush it to the vet. By the time I got back
it was dead and Natalie was holding it in her arms sobbing.
