A few months ago after I’d dropped James off to his Mum, I went to his room and found a little note on his bedside table.
It was a ‘France Letter’, I opened it, and this is what I saw..
So, it’s a ‘Message for Bear (that’s what he calls Vicki) and Dad’ then it says ‘Dad if you read please make it happen it is a dream :)’
You see, we’d mentioned to James that we’d have to take him for a little trip to France one day, we’d talked about taking the Ferry, or maybe the Eurotunnel. This had clearly struck a chord with him, and he’d decided to put his request in writing. He’d then written a list of things he’d like to buy, pretty standard French things – “Baguette, Croissant and Souvenirs’. He pondered what Vicki might purchase “Wines and Beers”.
There’s a time frame of 26 hours, 25 minutes and 00 seconds, which I’m not really sure what that applies to? There is a ‘Task’ though – ‘Keep (Get) some Euros’. He also pondered the timings of things. The train would take 6 1/2 hours, there would be 4 hours of driving and if we walked, it would take 10 hours.
When I saw the letter, we had to take him. He’s never left the country that he remembers (he went to a wedding in Germany when he was tiny). So long ago in fact that his Passport had expired, so we couldn’t immediately go. Plus, the looming nature of Brexit meant we didn’t really want to be queuing in Customs..
Thankfully though, that’s all delayed, so this weekend we booked our little trip to France, in a few weeks we’re popping over there for the day. I don’t think we’ll stray much past Calias. James is VERY excited – we even completed his task of getting some Euros at the weekend. Also had a little shopping spree on Amazon for all the car things you need – warning triangle, breathalyzer (or wine calculator as James called it), GB sticker. We’re taking Vicki’s fancy car that can alter the headlights automatically for foreign driving, so don’t need those weird sticker things!
I’m quite looking forward to it. I’ve not been to France since I was probably around James’ age. I don’t remember masses about it, my Mum being sick on the Hover Craft, a horrible restaurant with really rude staff, and… that’s about it! So it will be nice to create some new memories! It’s actually surprisingly cheap too – chopping in some Tesco Clubcard vouchers knocked the price right down!
So with France in a few weeks, and then Chicago a week after that, November is going to be full of travel – I can’t wait!
