Cursing, French-style

Yesterday I found out what it might be like to be a social pariah.

Boy #1 finishes nursery at 2.15pm. This is not at all convenient when you factor in naps for Boy #2, lunchtime, generally getting things done and - one misty day in the future - lunch dates, but that's how it is. Anyway, at around 2.05 pm the yard in front of the nursery building starts to fill up with parents and carers, either picking up from the morning, or dropping off for the afternoon session.

The parents are almost always mums, with the occasional domesticated father on his push-bike for variety. (He is invariably looking around for approbation on how emancipated he is to be picking up his child.) The carers consist of nannies and the odd grandparent. It's a pretty good cross section of the Chelsea population and usually, with the exception of the nannies, I am the token English person there.

Sometimes I drive (eco-crime, I know, but have you tried coaxing a tired 4 year old home in the rain on a 25 minute walk?), but just as often I load Boy #2 into his pantechnicon buggy ('let's go off road in Kensington and Chelsea!'), and walk, taking a foldable scooter along for Boy #1 to coast home on. Apart from the obvious advantage of factoring a 50 minute walk into my daily routine (namely, I can discount the Starbucks I buy on the way back as negated by the exercise), it also means I don't have to fight for a parking space. There are around 8 - for normal sized cars. And approximately 40 kids to be picked up - usually in mafia-black 4x4's of one variety or another. You do the math... It's a jungle.

Once we get there, I normally take Boy #2 into the nursery with me so he can get excited about this whole school thing. He was due to start there 3 mornings a week last Thursday, but obviously chicken-pox put paid to that until he is no longer contagious. This should be any day now, but is not yet the case. Inconveniently, the pox has also put paid to my routine of taking him into the classroom to fetch his brother, so for the last couple of days he has had to stay strapped into his buggy in the yard out front whilst I run in and out at top-speed to minimise both his frustration at being left trussed up, and the possibility he might - Houdini-like - finally work his way out of the straps.

So, yesterday, that is what I did. But - horror - when I came out with Boy #1 (as usual, he was moaning and complaining about having to scoot home rather than travel in the questionable comfort of the potty-mobile), in amongst the melee, a little girl was playing with Boy #2. She was waiting to go in for the afternoon session, and was NOT keeping her distance. Her mother - French and tres chic - was standing by her side, looking proudly on and ignoring the crop of spots on my son's gorgeous face.

"He's got chicken pox, I'm afraid" I announced as I cantered down the nursery steps and removed Boy #2 from her child's reach. "That's why he's still strapped into his buggy, and not inside with me."

The yard fell silent. I swear I heard a bell toll, and in my peripheral vision, saw tumbleweed blow by. The massed ranks of Euro-parents waiting to take their children in for the afternoon session glared. (The nannies were unperturbed - chicken pox, so what?)

And Chic French Maman said, as she gathered her child in her arms and looked at me like I was a mass-murderer, "Oh la la!"

In 7 years of living in this area and being surrounded by French people, I have never actually heard that before. I thought it was just a charicature. I thought nobody really said it. But there it was.

I am now waiting for an opportunity to use it myself. Any suggestions?