Single Pringle

I move to France tomorrow; I've packed everything, used up all the food that was going to go out of date and found that, serendipitously, my E111 card still has three years to go on it, which is jammy because I hadn't actually bothered to check until today.
I can't quite calm my pre-departure nerves, and I think back to Jason's preparation for life in Australia, which consisted of watching The Rescuers Down Under: I'm actually quite flush with Disney films set in France- Cinderella, The Aristocats, Beauty and the Beast, The Hunchback of Notre Dame... Sadly, all of these are seventy minutes plus and I have to be up in five hours. "Why are you staying up to blog then, you pillock?!" I hear my incensed readers cry. Well, 1) Aforementioned pre-departure nerves and 2) I care about you dear readers and want you to know what's been going on with my life.

Both my sisters and both their boyfriends came up to see me before I left last weekend: this left me feeling somewhat spare, everyone else in the family having a partner and all. This became especially apparent when we all went to play tennis, which consisted of a heated doubles game and me sitting on a bench reading my book.
Darcy, whom I shared a stage with in the Australian Amadeus, had a wonderfully evocative phrase: 'Single Pringle'. I think he used it only for its coy rhyme, but I quite like the image it conjurs- the lone pringle, left at the bottom of the tube, waiting to be picked, as delectable in its own way as its siblings but for some unknown cosmic reason, forlorn. For now, at least. Because no one ever leaves a pringle at the bottom of the tube for long. They're just too good: once you pop, you just cannot stop.
EVER.

Travis calls pringles 'tubas', because they come in a tube and this seems like a wonderful segue into talking about my visit to my apathetic godchild. He didn't know who I was and alternately called me 'JoJo' and 'Jamie', occasionally detouring to 'Rory' if his mum really pushed it, but even then he more often than not just ignored her. He seemed to like me nonetheless, although I suspect that he may actually have just thought that I wouldn't apply the same rules of 'no hitting' as his mother. No such luck.
He seemed appreciative of my hair, though, proclaiming it to be "much nicer than JoJo's", and since he was also calling me 'JoJo' at this time, I don't know how he held this paradox in his head.
He's also taken a keen interest in bats- I tried to relate to him the time that Josh took me to see the fruit bat colony in Melbourne, but he seemed quite bored until I said 'and then the tree just exploded with bats' at which point he turned to me and, with eyebrow raised in a perfect imitation of Spock, asked "but why did it explode?" I see that metaphor escapes him for another day.
Of course, I didn't just visit Travis but Mel as well. She is applying to rejoin the workforce, and I decided to dash her high spirits by relating some of the more irksome tales of customer relations from my time working for EUSA. She retorted that none of it could be as bad as some of what she has to put up with as a single mum and I suspect she's right: I sometimes forget that, as annoying as some of the douchebags in the cafe were, I didn't have to clean up their excrement.

I just met with Daniel for a drink, and it was nice because he's the only friend I still have who knew me not only from secondary, but also from primary school. We had fun reminiscing about teachers past and experiences in the classroom like when Ms. Fisher used to try and catch us out with math problems and then laude it over us that she was smarter than us, even though we were thirty years her junior. And how she used to heap affection on Alex Newton, smarmy prick.
In this same vein, I actually met one of my old classmates from secondary school in the park the other day: we chatted for a little while about where everyone is (she has remained much better connected than I- not that that's difficult), and I thought about people I haven't thought about in years. I often try not to think about William Brookes, because it just makes me angry and depressed, but speaking with Claire made me realise that all my tormentors will now have grown up and matured (except those who were teachers, obviously) and that I should really get in contact with some of them and give them a second chance, because Lord knows that I'm a better person than I used to be. But then I imagine what if they're as awful as I remember, and then I'll have the smugness of confirmation and then think how insufferable I'll become; better not risk it, to be honest. 

It's almost Midnight now and I really should be getting to sleep: writing this has not calmed me down as I had hoped it would, but hopefully I'll drop off out of sheer necessity. I'm trying to remind myself about what Will told me when I expressed my fears for returning to Edinburgh: "You make your own universe; if you want it to suck, it will suck." Of course, I don't want France to be awful, but if I go in expecting it to be les miserables, then I'll most likely look for things to affirm that belief (see above re: meeting old classmates). So, I have to keep my chin up and my hopes level: I can do this if I try, and maybe I can even enjoy myself along the way.