Change is good I keep telling myself, as I lie awake at 3am most mornings contemplating the magnitude of the plans we have.
In April Leo goes off to boarding school in Surrey. All being well, the girls will go too. Not to Woodcote where he is headed, although a boys’ school might suit them, but to one of the schools we visited last week.
We are due to hear from two of them any day now, and there are two more exams to sit for the others.
Once again I was surprised and pleased by how happy the girls were in England, they just seem to settle in straight away, despite the snow. Here is Bea on Clapham Common in, yes, a onesie, the latest hideous trend to hit the UK. She even wore hers to the Chelsea game, under her Chelsea dressing gown (nothing eccentric about Bea).
If they all go in April we will move to a smaller place when our lease is up here in March. First and foremost to save money to pay for all the school fees, but also because I don’t feel like rattling around this place gazing at their bedrooms and weeping because they’re not here. So we have that change to think about.
There is also massive change on the work front. I left the magazine I was working on at the end of December, and have some very exciting plans, but more on those when all is finalised.
I finished the latest book yesterday, 75,059 words. Am already thinking about the next one. And then there is the kitchen at Sainte Cecile….just to add to our outgoings we are putting in a new one, we hope in time for Easter when we will be there.
So quite enough to keep me awake at night, without the jet-lag. But as Winston Churchill said: “To improve is to change; to be perfect is to change often.” By the end of March I should be perfection personified….

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2013