50 plus 2 days!!

Welcome to the Pyrenees, people! ⛰️

Back again for day three and it started slightly more joyously, in that we were awoken at 10 am and not 9, and what’s more there was no soft “upsie dupsie bupsies”. Realising this, I joyously leapt out of bed and strolled down the hall which really, is so long that it could be one of the walks we do, to hear the sounds of my parents playing the Blues Brothers album.

After taking my iron pills (take that, deity from yesterday!) I enjoyed a tasty breakfast of chocolate biscuits, as dad expertly made sandwiches for RooPauls Gourmet Bakery, under my supervision. I got Allegra to take some pics, but dad did not in fact pose nor was he wearing a t-shirt, and really that probably isn’t going to sell sandwiches.

On that note, dad did critique my marketing half of the RooPaul business, since there is no influx in orders and he is stagnating at 6 customers. I hastily informed him that last year he was making five sandwiches a day, and that 6 is actually 120% of last year’s turnout. So that sounds impressive. Marketing done.

Lily complained long and loud enough about the Blues Brothers, despite the looks of childlike joy on Mum and dad’s faces while they danced to it in the kitchen, and so Dad bestowed upon her the right to choose the car playlist for our upcoming hour-long drive. I was, of course, outraged at this, but Dad would hear no complaints.

Time to get my own revenge, then.

I noticed that Lily, who famously hates matching, was doing her hair in two pigtail-plaits. And then I wandered down to the bathroom where Tate was doing her hair in pigtails.

And I knew, then, what I had to do.

With a couple of well placed hints and a few hairbands, Allegra and I had pigtail hair, and we all wandered back to the kitchen where Lily sat, shocked to find that she no longer was original.

As soon as mum noticed the pigtail trend, she refused to be left out, and so she too did some pigtail plaits. We were a team!

However, despite many requests, Dad refused to join in. And also he did not have the hair necessary for this.

Once we were all sunscreen and dressed in swaggy outfits (me wearing my iconic sport skirt that you remember from last year, in relation to the endless amount of children in red caps who did not like it), we stepped, nay, sashayed out the door and into the car, 20 minutes later than planned, to the chagrin of Dad. But it was alright because Lily kindly put on her throwback playlist (she is a true communist, as dad said). And this playlist is full of bops that really came out when I was like 6 or 7 (yes sisters, 676767 we know), including songs such as “Dance with me” by Olly Murs which I hadn’t heard for years, or “Domino” by Jessie J, which, same.

The drive was an hour long but it felt much shorter thanks to the music, and so when we arrived I almost didn’t realise that it was already past 12. It was a more touristy walk than yesterday’s, where we only saw like four other people and they were all running, and so finding a parking spot was not in fact easy. But we managed (I say "we" like I contributed in any way), and soon enough we were on our way along the clearly delimited and very visible path, much like yesterday.

However, since we went the wrong way yesterday, we thought that we should not be such fools who take the obvious route today, and it was lucky that we did because we were *not* on the right path.

So we crossed a field to get to the right one, a field that Lily tried to get her sisters to frolic through, but the twins were being the twins, and my knee hurt, so she sulked instead, proclaiming that she was unloved.

Dad observed, and rightly so, that every time we go on walks the twins walk just the two of them, and they look like they’re talking to catch each other up on their lives, even though they literally spend every second of every day together. It’s quite funny to see them actually. Who knows what they actually say. This is something that even my lack of journalistic integrity could not bring me to guess.

Now an interesting fact for you is that originally we wanted to do the walk we were supposed to do yesterday, but we decided it was quite long and so better to do a simple one today and save the complicated one for a later date.

Turns out this walk was PRETTY DAMN DEMANDING AS WELL.

It was just a fairly steep uphill the whole way there, on rocky ground with many other people around, and hairpin turns. It was also pretty warm.

At some point on the walk Lily was talking about how the twins don’t walk with us (Lily complained a lot about how we always get separated on family walks), and some old guy who is walking past says to us “I bet you’re Irish”.

Excuse me??? Why???

I mean I have nothing against the Irish but that is a really random thing to say. Lily said no, we’re English (which is not technically true but hey), but seriously we wondered for a while as to why he said that. We varied from “because a lot of us currently have ginger-ish hair” to “we were talking quite loudly and heatedly, is that a stereotype?” to “maybe it’s the pot of gold and the Irish flag in my hands!”

We’re rather funny people.

Lily and I finally managed to get the twins to walk with us by playing “he’s a ten, but”, in which you say “he’s a ten” (talking about no man in particular, just a hypothetical man who is a ten out of ten) and then you list a flaw, such as “but he can’t cook”. Then, each sister gives her new rating, like 6 or 7 (yes sisters, 676767), and we see who gets closest to the rating thought of by the first sister.

It’s good fun!

We played that all the way until we got to the lake, which was quite pretty and nice to look at. However, we were hungry as lunchtime had been and gone without us, and also it was very warm in the sun and there wasn’t much shade nearby, and also there were many people. Dad wanted us to sit by the waterfall (you all know by now of his love of waterfalls), and so we decided, “it can’t be *that* far around the lake, let's go to the other side and sit by the waterfall in the shade”.

Your eyes will always deceive you, people. You can’t trust them.

It was over a kilometer. It really did not look it. Plus, it seemed like there was a path; it was just a lot of loose and shifting rocks.

Conversation around the lake was sparse, as we were focused on not slipping and dying, but at one point I was talking to Lily about rolling Rs, the letter, and how we can't do it when most people can. So I asked dad, who was behind me, “can you roll your Rs?” and he said, “yep!”. And then I sort of waited for him to do so, and then I heard mum laugh behind him.

I’m sure you can guess why. If not, try saying “roll your Rs” out loud, that might clear things up!

Anyway, we made it around the lake with no casualties, although it was a near thing, and sat in nice solitude on some patches of grassy rocks, contemplating the beauty of the waterfall. I was a little let down by the lack of elegies on dad’s behalf; usually at the sight of a waterfall he has become Arthur Rimbaud.

Lunch was delicious, RooPaul’s sandwiches were described as “scrumptious” and there were totally no complaints at all, so you know, that’s a success. Lily did go feral over some cookies of which there weren’t many left, and since they had travelled from Paris they were crumbled and crummy. So despite how mum asked for some, and it is mum’s birthday trip after all, Lily refused like the cruel soul she is. Her defense was that because her jaw hurts she eats slowly and so yesterday we packed up lunch before she could have any biscuits.

So hilariously, Tate says “she’s a ten, but she eats really slowly because her jaw hurts and she steals the cookies and then SHE SPILLS ALL THE COOKIES ON THE GROUND TEN SECOND RULE TEN SECOND RULE!!!”.

Let’s just say, I’m sure you can garner from that what Lily did halfway through Tate’s joke. I mean the timing was perfection: Tate could make her joke even funnier, I was laughing hysterically, Lily was scooping small cookie pieces back into the box, Allegra for some reason crouched into a diving position as if she were about to dive into the cookie pile???

It was a genuinely good time.

On the way back around the lake on the aforementioned craggy and shifty ground, Mum rolled her ankle a little, and despite the sharp pain, she soldiered on and it seemed to go away; it was all ok.

This totally *won’t* be an important plot point later on (subtle foreshadowing).

As we reached the normal path again, we somehow ended up in the same old conversation/argument that has to do with misogyny, and always is mum vs Lily because they simply disagree on many things while also saying the exact *same* things. Despite the fact that I sort of agree with mum, it’s sort of stronger than me: I always side with Lily in every argument(except when she’s against me of course). As soon as Lily storms off, as she always does, a wave of clarity befalls me and a truce is made with Mum.

This is what happened today, and me and mum then spent a lot of time talking about fun and also important stuff. For example, I professed my hate for my arch nemesis at school, who is just so damn successful it’s annoying and how does he still have time to do everything he does and also party on the Seine with his millions of friends??? And we also talked about one group that passed us and how they were really just *too* perfect, or they think they are, and they take themselves too seriously and they probably didn’t like our conversation about misogyny.

We’re such intellectuals, mum and me.

We caught up to dad at some point, and I told him about the joy of wearing a walking skirt and I felt bad that he couldn’t wear one. And he said “well, did you know, when I was about 7, I wore a kilt once”. I found this funny and intriguing and he explained in more detail, which was not very much, since he couldn't really remember. There was a lot of “um” and “I don’t know” in the story. Riveting stuff.

Lily was still a mile ahead, grumpy as can be, the conversation moved on, and soon we were close to the twins (whom Lily had passed) (do I just put whom because Lily said it annoys her yesterday) (I guess we’ll never know). And then I said to mum how I really liked my walking skirt. Dad was next to us, and he said he felt like we’d had this conversion already. He said “did you know, when I was about 7, I wore a kilt once”. We laughed, quite a lot actually. I asked the same follow up questions, feigning surprise.

The second time around, he did not have more information.

We truly are so funny.

We wanted to take a family selfie, but Lily was far ahead, so we were obliged to take one with just the five of us as if it were 2025 all over again and I still lived with them. Gosh I’m getting sad and nostalgic now. In my defense it is 1:30 in the morning.

Moving swiftly on!

The twins caught up with Lily, and me and the parents were far behind. I had a stitch you see, and Mum told me that when we were younger we just stretched while singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and it went away. I did not recall nor believe her, but Mum insisted that I try it. So there I was, on the path singing and touching my toes.

Lo and behold, it worked! I shall never doubt my mum again.!

So as I said, we were far behind the other three, but at one point we were just walking and we heard a very loud chorus of “Moooo” from the side of the path, in the trees. We turn, perplexed, and there they are: my sisters. As they crouched in the dirt, mooing away, the twins whispering to Lily “we said we’d be quiet while mooing!”, Lily still mooing to her heart's content, I have never been prouder.

When we asked for context, they simply told us they wanted to do the Penguins scene; true fans of the movie will understand .

We had some delectable walker’s chocolate, drank some walker’s water, and continued on. I had put the metal water bottle in my pocket (yes my skirt has pockets big enough to hold a water bottle, it's a good damn skirt) but there was ice in it and it sounded like I was wearing a cowbell when I stepped, which was quite funny, especially when we saw real cows with cowbells. I was unamused by their jokes.

Once we got to the bottom, Lily convinced us all to get crepes and drinks at the little café, which we all were fairly happy to do, as you can imagine. We got ginger beer and lemonade all round, and for some reason, Allegra, Mum and Dad were breathing in the air in their cups of ginger beer and then coughing, but when I tried to do it it didn’t make me cough. I feel like this was somehow a prank, but the tears in their eyes from excessive coughing were real. It was a confusing moment.

On the way home, Mum drove, and the twins picked the music which means, you guessed it, a lot of kpop. In fact, exclusively kpop. This was an hour drive.

Dad was also handing out marmite on bread, but none of us sisters wanted some. Dad offered “who wants marmite bread?” and we all gave some variation of “no, not hungry”. Over the music, this must have been a little tough for dad to hear, especially since we were all talking at the same time. So then Dad said “anyone who wants bread, say “yes please”.

Dead silence.

And then we burst out laughing because it was just so funny because we felt bad for dad because no one answered and he just wanted to hand out sandwiches and I really can’t explain to you how funny this was but you had to be there.

Around halfway through, mum had to stop driving because of the blinding pain in her ankle. We laughed about it, but it was actually serious. This was proven when we got home and mum could put basically no weight on it, leading her to hop from the car to the house and then sort of crawl/shuffle up the steps to the door. It was veeeeery funny to watch, because this never happens to mum.

As Dad said, it’s all fun and games when you’re 49, but you hit 50 and your body simply isn’t as spry as it once was!

So mum sat on the sofa and watched some Kpop with Tate until she went to the pool, and then watched Taylor Swift music videos with me until it was dinner time, at which point we watched some of the new series of Scrubs (which is so far pretty funny in spite of our low expectations). Dinner was tasty pizza and potato salad prepared by Dad, and no one else.

God I can just hear Lily whining.

Dad and Lily, of course, made dinner, since mum was out of action and Lily is a pretty good cook.

At 10, it was demanded that we watch the F1 race which LIly has reported back to me as being “a good one” (Hamilton in 2nd place!), but I missed it because I was writing this blog and keeping mum company after she went to bed to rest her ankle, which she declares is now “fine” even though I saw her shuffle down the hall. I think she’s just annoyed at dad though. Dad put arnica on her foot anyway.

And that was the day! Photos will be tomorrow morning when I am less tired :)

But here we are, at the end of the day, feet aching (some more than others) but hearts warm. Here's to 50 plus 2 days!!

See you tomorrow!Read more