Big day...

... for a slightly less small boy.

Conor is 6. This certainly doesn't feel 5 years and 364 days ago. We had a fine day. School was suspended for a 'national' holiday in Conor's honour. We had a breakfast opening presents, then he rushed off to play with them all. That state of affairs lasted most of the day (bar a brief trip into town and a break for lunch). Then his favourite dinner (sausage and mash), too much cake, and a movie (Spiderman). I was going to blip his cake, which was supposed to be a tall gorgeous chocolate cake, but thanks to the wrong cake tin, and French self-raising flour not behaving as anticipated, I had to improvise. Some planned petit fours ended up being added as a dog's face in tribute to his favourite toy.

The trip into town yielded this shot, of one of the local cafe bars. We feared for a brief moment that it had closed, but it's just on its January break. Much of France closes down in August, round here it's January - it's too much of a tourist town to lose the August trade.

Brief fracas later around the car. Not a big deal as it turns out, but some guys were sitting drinking in our driveway, one of them sitting on the car boot. That's a step too far for Mr B so there was a confrontation, a retreat (from them) and me (with pounding heart) asking them to just go away, with 112 dialled ready on my phone just in case things went postal. I hate that kind of thing. I've only ever seen Mr B close to violence twice - both times over threats to his car. He has reassured me that he'd react just the same if someone tried to sit on me. Hmmm.

Not that that affected the day though - which has all been about Conor. He swears he will always always always want to live with me (hope not) but I still have that combination of terror and pride with every step he takes away from me. This is going to be a very hard year for him: school, new language, new friends, new home. I hope I'm looking back at this in a year's time wondering what the heck I was worrying about.