cake for breakfast vol 2.10

end of year tears + heatwaves with no AC

It’s the last day of the school year here and last night I couldn’t sleep because my heart was pounding due to the insanely fast passage of time. I understand there is nothing more boring to write about than how fast time goes by, but it is genuinely frightening to me. It feels so recent that I was praying for my kids to have good teachers and friends this year, and now they are literally crying because God answered that prayer so generously that they are devastated that the school year is over.

We’re in a weird phase because we’re still anticipating a move, but we don’t know exactly when it will happen. We’ve decided that even if it is technically possible - which is probably won’t be - we will not move before the beginning of the new school year, because we want a gentler transition to the new house/school for the kids, and also don’t want them to spend the entire summer break feeling anxious about all the unknowns. They still very firmly do not want to move, and for the reasons above, I am almost hoping that they don’t like their teachers in the new school year so that it isn’t as painful to leave… Meanwhile, we’re still going to be in our current place for long enough that life will keep going on as usual for now, but there’s a constant, low level anxiety for all of us about the changes that lie ahead.

on the home front

As I’m sure you’re aware because it seems to have been news everywhere, we had a major heatwave about a week ago, and are headed for another one in a week or so from now. As you probably also know, Europe is the fastest warming continent, and we’re truly experiencing it in realtime - I often spent summers in France as a child, and we never had temperatures like these, even in the south. There might have been the occasional very hot day or two here and there, but we didn’t have regular, sustained periods of extreme heat.

There is much talk about the fact that Europeans don’t use AC, which I can attest to. I have mixed feelings about it. Although I obviously dislike sweltering in an apartment that has no opportunity to cool down and consequently gets to 36C (97F) inside, I do like working “with” the weather. Almost all French homes are fitted with blackout blinds, so most people wake up early to let in fresh air in during the coolest part of the day, and then close the windows and lower the blinds by late morning to keep the worst of the heat out. We take cold showers, drink cold drinks, eat a lot of ice cream, and do as little as possible. There is something nice about changing your rhythm to adapt to the natural world, instead of artificially inducing temperatures that mean you can carry on as if nothing changed.

That said, obviously it is not possible for everyone to just adapt to the weather. Although school technically stayed open during the week of the heatwave, parents were asked to keep kids home if at all possible. I ended up looking after a bunch of kids whose parents work full-time and found themselves in a Covid-style lockdown, having to work remotely with kids underfoot. This model is not sustainable, so I definitely think that, at the very least, schools urgently need to be equipped with AC. And while a week is just about manageable at home, it will become much harder to cope as extreme heat takes over increasing swathes of the summer, so I concede that AC is going to become a necessity at home too.

(My husband nearly bought an AC unit this time round, but literal fist fights were breaking out in stores because the demand was so high! So we figured that if we’re gonna invest, better to do it in the winter when we won’t have competition…)

I also bought some summery, tank top and shorts PJs, which has honestly made a huge difference. Pyjamas are one of those things that, for whatever reason, I feel are completely frivolous and unnecessary, so I always wear sweatpants I’ve had since university or hand-me-downs from my mum, with t-shirts that my husband gets free at conferences. But I simply could not wear sweatpants and baggy t-shirts in these temperatures, and so I splurged a little and have been so happy with my summer pyjama sets.

We also went to the forest to escape the heat. Paris is surrounded by a lot of forest, and trees are the OG AC!

i’m reading

• This is Happiness, by Niall Williams - I was influenced by Christy Isinger to read this, and novels by Irish authors are a pretty easy sell for me. It was gorgeous, but I definitely picked the wrong moment to read it - it’s the kind of novel you want to sink into for long periods of reading while skies are grey and rain is falling, rather than in oppressive heat while children keep coming in to tell you that their brother is so annoying and could I please go and tell him off. But, I did love it, so I’m thinking I’ll re-read it in a year or two in autumn or winter (it is actually partially set in summer but I still don’t feel it’s a summer-y novel).

• Yellowface, by R. F. Kuang - I learned my lesson with This Is Happiness and knew I just needed to read something easy and engrossing, so I settled on this hit from a few years ago. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it! Clearly it is not great literature, but it is fun and gripping and the subject matter - trying to be a writer in the 2020s - was of personal interest. The protagonist is entirely unlikeable but I still think Kuang does a good job of pointing out how insane the world of publishing and social media are, while telling a funny and original story. Hoping this will turn into a movie or series.

they’re reading

I have been letting the kids read whatever they feel like, too, since I wanted them to be occupied and not whining. I read the first The Diary of a Wimpy Kid with my 6yo, which he liked a lot but I did not, so I will be trying to prevent him from getting his hands on any more of them (I’m happy for him to read them alone but I don’t want to read them aloud and his reading in English is still a bit too slow for him to manage full books independently). He’s also obsessed with a series of French comics called Les blagues de Toto, and I can often hear him cracking up as he reads them during quiet time.

My daughter has been flying through books. She has read 7/8 the Beezus and Ramona series, Ways to Make Sunshine by Renée Watson which is dubbed as an African American Ramona and which she loved, and started a French series about ballerinas at the École de danse de l’Opéra de Paris, which is in our town. (If anyone is interested or has interested kids, here’s a 15 min short about the kids who start training to be professional ballet dancers at the school, age 12). Over the summer I’m planning to start reading the Penderwicks series with her, and maybe the Vanderbeekers, too.

Alright, that’s all from me for now! I’m phasing out paid subscriptions, but I’m so appreciative of the people who make one-off contributions on my Buy Me A Coffee page, which you can do here:

Thanks so much. Gina x