In case you hadn't noticed, there's a new weekly English language newspaper: French-Week. And in case you didn't get a copy this week, here's a little something written by yours truly.
When the eldest came home from school last night, I greeted her with the usual 'had a good day?' question. As the answer is always the same, except for when she can't be bothered to talk and just grunts instead and as I was busy cooking dinner, I must admit I wasn't really listening to the reply.
So it took a few seconds for her response to sink in. When it did, I stopped stirring whatever it was that I was stirring, dropped the wooden spoon and said 'WHAT?'
'Like I said, fine, other than I spent two hours with some woman waving a polystyrene penis, wearing a condom, in my face.'
It seemed that yesterday was the day the 3iemes 'did' sex. They had a two hour session of sex education and the subject is now covered. No pun intended. Its a bit late in the day in my opinion, as according to my friend Colette, who works in the local pharmacy and knows these things, most of them are 'doing' sex already.
The daughters account of the session was hilarious and I don't think I can do it justice. For starters they watched a cartoon film about a couple of teens, Jean-Pierre and Lucille, who discussed having sex, had sex and then analysed the whole thing. How very French.
The style was sheer 70's (Joy of Sex) but with added psychedelic overtones. To appeal to the teenage market maybe? By the time JP said to Lucille during the post coital analysis, 'I wanted to touch your vagina...again', my daughter was in hysterics. I'm no teenager but even I know they stopped talking like that in the 1930's - if they ever did.
And the grand finale was a full screen of 52 cartoon cocks of all different shapes and sizes that suddenly all 'stood to attention'. Presumably this was to reassure the boys in the class? Or maybe to imply that there's a different shaped willy for every week of the year. As the daughter was laughing out loud by now, the sex expert who had been shipped in for the mornings session, had her marked down as a troublemaker and moved her to the front row. None of the other kids laughed. After all, this woman was an 'expert' and the French have huge respect for experts.
So my poor daughter had to control her giggles. As she said afterwards, 'I can see the point of showing us how to use condoms. But did she really need to keep hold of it once she finished putting it on? And did she need to wave her arms around quite so much when she talked?
Still as a method of birth control it is probably quite effective. I think the moth-eaten polystyrene penis has put her off sex for the foreseeable future.