Sick with embarrassment

Saturday morning was Child 2's ballet class. I often meet up with a German friend there – her daughter is in the same ballet class. We thought we would dash to the supermarket while the children were dancing. While we were shopping, suddenly they announced the time. Now, they never normally do that, right? So I was making facetious comments in German, when suddenly my friend said, 'But isn't it Remembrance Day?'. Suddenly the penny dropped – 11 o'clock on 11th November! Everyone around me was observing the two minutes' silence and I was chattering in German.

Is it more embarrassing to have people think that you're a foreigner who doesn't know British customs, or to have people think you're a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or to be a British person being taken for a German who doesn't care about the war dead, or... I was very embarrassed. Especially as the same friend and I had been at choir practice together the night before, rehearsing a beautiful and moving short choral setting of Laurence Binyon's lines:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.


The children both threw up on Sunday night, possibly as they couldn't bear the embarrassment of their thoughtless mother any more. Since then, I've been feeling either 1) guilty for leaving them with other people so I can go to my course or 2) frustrated as my feeble attempts to amuse them at home fall flat and I fail to do any work on my assignment. They love watching Charlie and Lola on the internet but that means I have no laptop for working. Pen and paper? Too boring and practical (for me, not for them). Thank goodness for downloadable dress-up Charlie and Lola dolls and beautiful ballet videos (Swan Lake and a dance set to a German pop song) for an occasional change from children's DVDs.



I'm feeling intrigued by the new James Bond and might try to persuade Husband (in the interest of conversational topics, you understand) to try to book a babysitter to watch it some time while it's still in the cinema. I enjoyed the trailer – both this original and this non-original version of it. Is it just me, or does that seem a bit odd so close to Remembrance Day?



This post was previously published as a student blog for The Times online.