Erm, I’m sorry about that! :idsu;;er 2020 is what my keyboard types when its’ language choice is set on the English keyboard. What I really wanted to title this was Midsummer 2020, but when I saw those letters and grammatical icons on my screen, I remembered something that I wanted to write about.
No, it’s not any commentary about Elon Musks CovidTimes babys’ name -although, I am half inclined to voice my thoughts on that idea, but given this is the 21st century and scathing opinions have become rightfully taboo, although still hugely prevalent, I’m just going to say that I’m a little bit glad that he doesn’t brag about being Safeffricen.
Lockdown, confinement, social distancing, well, they’re all pretty much over now. Covid19 less so, but the powers that be have decided that indeed, life must go on. My kids are back at school full time, I’ve become the actual elephant in the zoom, the traffic streaming down Route de la Wantzenau is as noisy as it always was, and evening walks for this family have come to a grinding halt. We’re finally able to cross the border and we’re off to replenish our grocery cupboards with less pricey German supplies. My own return to work has been put back while it’s still quiet, for which I am happy and bummed all at the same time.
With close on 100 days at home for me, I have pestered you with hundreds of photos, a few thousand words, some recipes (Chicken curry, Crumpets and Hot Cross Buns were the top faves), plenty of happy moments in my kitchen and on family walks, discovered the demise of my brown hair – I now have clumps of very visible grey being discovered lying in dirty corners- and finally finished reading 1088 pages of His Dark Materials. And I have started and stopped several attempts at trying to write something to sign off this space in time.
So, :idsu;;er 2020:
Little something I did not know until we moved here, was a thing called an AZERTY keyboard, and how it is different to the keyboard I was taught to type on in grade -whatever. My many many years spent working with knives and food meant this little pearler of information remained largely obscured from my life. When I started using an iPhone for the first time, I realised that using the French keyboard would help me to write some things in French (this is a winner tip by the way, when you have my level of French and want to type an email of marginal importance without ‘phoning a friend’. It prompts simple verb conjugation and autocorrects bad spelling if you’re careful enough). However, the letters on the french keyboard are located differently to our english keyboards so it took a little getting accustomed to.
And then earlier this year we needed to buy a new computer for home. Instead of a tower and screen, we chose to get a laptop for greater mobility. However, laptops don’t come with qwerty keyboards in France. We can choose the language we’re writing in, so I can tell Windows that I want to write in English, but then it converts my strokes to the english keyboard, even though I am staring at the french letters on these keys. As you can see, I failed touch typing in Standard 6, and even in the age of computers I still stare diligently at the keyboard and not the screen when I’m writing. Hence :idsu;;er 2020.
Luckily for me, I am somewhat accustomed to the keys on the azerty keyboard now, (unlike my hubby who has a separate qwerty keyboard plugged in to a USB port for when he uses the laptop, and gets quite grumpy if I’ve moved it away and he can’t find it)
Happily, I am used to it now, and a simple toggle of the language option makes life easier for everyone. Aside from the variation of types of e’s – to determine plural, or if a word is masculine or feminine, or simply to finish the sound of the word- all the french vowels have an accent to change it’s inflection to mean something else. As a result, the azerty keyboard has made room for this, so if I happen to be writing something in French, I have the freedom to use the letters on the keyboard and not have to search it up on a word document and ‘insert’ it as a symbol. Crême brulée is so much more elegant that creme brulee, non? (I would queue up a ROFL emoji here, but I have no idea how to).
Which brings me on to a topic that I have been wondering about all this time that our kids have been homeschooling.
Beth’s teacher has e-mailed her work every day. It’s always a Word Document (with grammar, vocab, orthographe, maths, as well as links to You Tube videos for lessons, be it exersice, singing or actual lessons,) which I guess I could have printed for her, and made her write up her answers separately; and then to scan and e-mail back via a PDF document. Complicated AF. What we discovered would be best for her was to teach her how to use a computer, and do all the work directly on to the word docs. Ironic right? How I’ve always nagged at them to get off the computers and away from the screens, and now how this time has changed to encourage our kids to become computer proficcient. For the most part, I am glad Beth has embraced this life skill My one question to parents and teachers alike: Is it acceptable that Beth relies on the spell check option to correct her spelling? For example, if her exercise is to conjugate a verb, (and there are possibly 30 different options per verb), surely it’s not okay to use a spell check? Granted, she could still guess the wrong one, but if she knows her rules well enough, that spell check will garner the correct answer.
As a side note, I have picked up one or 2 things regarding the french language since having Beth at home working (almost) autonomously. While I can help her out with her English homework, I honestly can’t do the same for French, and when I watch her set about her grammar exercises, I realise that the few weeks of French lessons I took in 2014 were a simple view of getting by. Whtat I really need is for Beth’s teacher to teach me french grammar from the perspective of a 9 year old. I reckon those good old building blocks will help me understand better.
It’s Thursday afternoon, and I am sitting on my terrace with earphones on listening to John Denver via You Tube (One child is having her last online english lesson for the year). I forsee an imminent move away from real music to streaming music before the end of the year: my kids seem to want more than the iTunes music we buy them these days, and even though my iTunes is filled up with purchases of Meghan Trainor, Billie Eilish and 5 Direction, they still seem to turn to You Tube music, and I have to constantly skip through their yucky choices despite them not listening to the music I bought them. [Don’t you miss mooching around cd shops and walking away with 5 new cd’s that will lie scattered under your car seat for a few months until the next stack of cd’s?]
It’s midsummer this weekend and it looks like rain and grey skies will be the order of the day but I’m okay with that this year. It’s also very nearly the end of the school year, and the summer holidays will be up. What an incredibly bizarre school year it has been, and despite the 3 months of complete uncertainty we’ve almost come out of, there is still so much to come. We have tickets booked to fly home for 4 weeks, and we still don’t know if we will be able to visit. Each day gets closer to 14 July (our flight date) and we no closer to knowing if the flight will happen, if we do get out, what quarantine status we will have to do, and whether the French will allow us back. Repatriation flights are out of the question, as their expense is unnecessary, and the entire process seems somewhat circumspect, and honestly, I’m flip-flopping between what I want and need. Official news today is that ‘one or more of your flights are cancelled’. The lack of definitive conviction from the airlines is something I am finding particularly frustrating (although, I understand how challenging the situation is). Whatever is going on, I can still not say whether we will be in South Africa this July or not.
(If not, I am going to start writing up a care package list, hoping a family member will take pity and offer to send it over at our expense. It will include Rooibos and 5 Roses Tea, baking powder, Woolworths broeks for Alex and I).
Before the month of June completely passes us by and I fail to send this, let me bid you adieu. No recipe this time. No nostalgic anecdotes. But then again, the moment for that has passed.
All my love and best wishes,
Moi, xxx
Pinot, Bretzels, and Cathedrals 