“I hate Sarkozy,” Leonardo told me this morning. The reason? He makes him go to school. “Does Sarkozy go to school?” he demanded angrily, throwing his Spider-man school bag across the room.

“No,” I said. “He has a job. Either you go to school or you have a job.”

As I said it I realised what a death sentence it sounded. Either school or work. Surely there has to be a third way?

I think in a way there is. A very smart lady from French Glamour magazine who was at the round table talk I attended in Paris summed it up well. She said that life nowadays is not as uniform as it once was. You go through several different stages, almost lives if you like. She called it “a Neapolitan cake life”.

For me, our life in England was one layer of the cake, as was university. Our life in France is another. And very soon we may be moving on to another, rather unusual, layer of cake. I’ll keep you posted.

Copyright: Helena Frith Powell 2008