I am going mad trying to set up a weeks skiing holiday for my son and me. His Gap year is going insanely badly as he has not heard from any universities so has no idea if he has to re-take his French exam or not. Either they will all say No or they will say Yes provisionally or they will say Yes. Each option means he would have to do something different. Why is Life so cruel? This is all happening because he got 296 marks instead of 300. So is counted as one grade lower than he needs. And would have passed easily except that the brilliant teacher who had been at the school for fifteen years decided to go and find herself up the Amazon or something. So his last crucial year was spent with a hastily promoted SPANISH French teacher who can't speak English too well. The ludicrous Catch 22 element was that he originally wanted to do Spanish but after a few weeks with this same woman he switched to French, as she was so irritating and incompetent. Then the next year he found to his horror that she had become his new French teacher. When I rang the school and asked to speak to the Head of the Language Dept. to complain I found - Yes - SHE was now the Head of Languages. The Dept. therefore consisted of her - inefficient, annoying but also smug, arrogant and untouchable - and a weedy, hopeless male literature teacher prone to squeaky shouting. And this is one of the most expensive schools in London with a really good academic reputation. Maddeningly, several of his class were bi-lingual so would do well even if taught by a gorilla; which means she will never be found out.

I am boring even myself but it is so f@cking unfair.

Anyway, to cheer him up from an all time low and to force myself out of the house I thought that we could go skiing. I have never done this but was once, ( a far away once), a keen ice skater. All his friends are back at school re-taking or have disappeared abroad in some uninteresting and unaccompaniable way or obviously he would not have considered the uncoolness of this idea. I thought that we would go to Sweden, to erA. Thus avoiding any immediate and horrific French or German half-term invasions of tiny bores. I have had a romantic idea of this place since I read some article years ago about torch-lit pistes and dog-sled expeditions culminating in snow picnics with barbecued reindeer meat, (I can do that - I once ate blackbird pate). The town is on the edge of a huge frozen lake which you can skate across.

And it seems to be totally booked up. This cannot be happening. I have messed about with the Internet for two days and can find nothing. On one site it said, 'Hotel rooms in A.. at this time of year are like gold dust'. Tomorrow I am throwing myself into the hands of a travel agent. Oh, help me please, please. The horrible truth is, too, that both my son and I are activity resistant and would always rather stay where we are however vile the present and exciting the future. If this doesn't work out, I can see weeks of slumped procrastination setting in. I sometimes wonder if God actually wants me to do anything.
- posted by Iris @ 1/26/2004 10:54:00 PM comment