September

Falco started school this month. We expected him to have a great time, because he had been looking forward to it for ages. That was true, in part, but it was also a shock to him that he was suddenly no longer the largest and most capable in his class, as he had been in playschool. He also hated losing his network. Falco is a networker and is only happy when he has a constellation of people around him who he knows how to influence. Consequently his first few weeks were, in his estimation, not good and thereafter rapidly improved as he gained friends and influenced people.

Daniel and Matthijs started basketball. They enjoy it and more importantly their mother, the fanatic, has two sons at basketball with a reasonable chance that one of them will persist at it. If not, there is still Falco to come…

This month was also a time for the monsters to visit the dentist. Somehow a year had gone by between visits, but they were all fine and behaved themselves very well. Certainly they are not (yet) as terrified of the dentist as I was at their age. Both Daniel and Matthijs have full-grown molars. Apparently these do not swap with baby-teeth because they just grow deeper in the mouth than the baby teeth ever were: we live and learn. They got “sealed” which means the dentist puts a layer of fluoride-emitting gundge on the molars to seal up all the tiny crevices and prevent decay starting.

The next day Falco looked at Marjolein’s arm, at a place where she has a dent from many blood donations, and told her that she had a hole in her and must go to the dentist to get it fixed.

It was also Matthijs’ birthday this month. It was the first birthday since Marjolein’s mother died, so she was worried that it would seem a bit weird without her. Apparently her friends thought about that too and turned up “en masse”, so it became a very cheerful and chaotic party: quite normal for us. It was fine weather so we kicked everyone out into the garden and fed their faces.

Later in the month Marjolein and her friend Saskia went on the razzle in Antwerp for the weekend leaving muggings holding the fort. Fortunately Matthijs had a Pharos camp so the suffering was muted. The chavs had a fine time in Antwerp with precious little cultural exposure, ultra-xtreme shopping and much beer and cinema.

Coming back Marjolein had to dive into the administration of her mother’s affairs, going all round the houses with lawyers and banks and deciding what to do with her mother’s little house in Noordwijk. Particularly important and tedious was repatriating her French bank account. Clichés about French efficiency were declared founded.