Sunday 5 September 2010

La Rentrée

The term rentrée should come with a warning. The children go back to school so that the trade unions can turf them out again because of strikes.

The season's first strike finds my eldest barely into her second week at secondary school. It's in the 15th arrondissement which is about a 20 minute metro ride from our flat.

Apparently there'll be one train in three on Tuesday so she'll be able to get there albeit in crushed circumstances. However the head of the school says she doesn't know how many of her teachers will be on strike. So effectively the eldest could get there and not have any lessons. The fact that the head knows that the canteen will not function merely underlines all the lurid cliches about the French.