And so to the optician

We have our standard health insurance scheme - we belong to the regime for the priests, nuns etc. - and a top-up insurance, a mutuelle, so when you need glasses you have to ring to find out with which optician your mutuelle has an arrangement. So we ended up going to an optician on the other side of Pessac. I met Catrin off the bus from school and we scuttled through the torrential downpours into the opticians' - a very grand place like a small supermarket entirely dedicated to spectacles. And it seemed deserted.

Until a young woman spotted us and came over. She took my Carte Vitale and the card from our mutuelle and then said "So what kind of frames would you like", directing us towards the swanky brands. Catrin tried several different ones and eventually settled on a pair from down the other end of the shop.

Then came the totting up. Without the mutuelle your glasses would come to a King's Ransom, but because of the mutuelle you get so-and-so reduction on the frames and there's a set list of prices for the lenses, so that comes to ... an Italian Industrialist's Ransom.

I signed here ... and here ... and here ... and here ... and put my card in the slot and poked the numbers.

Oh, and there's a free spare pair from another range of frames...

So they'll be ready on Friday in time for Catrin to take them on her school trip.

Normally Catrin would be in school all day on Friday but it's the Père Cent*, so they will probably close the school and even if they don't she's not going anyway. So we'll go and collect her specs.

* the Père Cent# is celebrated 100 days before the baccalaureate exams, when bac candidates run amok round the street casting eggs, ketchup, flour etc. at those lycéens in the lower years. Last year Catrin went to school to find it closed and got pelted with ketchup and flour while fleeing for the bus home.

# Catrin and I argued hammer and tongs, tooth and nail over the spelling of Père Cent, she insisted that it's not Père Cent as in Père Noël and in the end I acquiesced and wrote percent... Then the school sent out it's traditional Père Cent warning letter "Any child found..." and it's spelt... Père Cent.