It’s the final countdown. There’s less than a week until Ruadhri’s rentrée (return to school) and we’re delivering Caiti to Uni at Bordeaux before then and Benj to Limoges just after. So the serious packing is now underway. We’re kitting Caiti out with a combination of new items from the supermarket and secondhand bits and pieces, mainly her crockery and cutlery and cooking utensils, from Gavroche in Boussac, a large warehouse of house clearance items. The latter will need a very good scrub in hot, soapy water but generally the stuff we buy there is all old-fashioned good quality and made-to-last. In other words, not made in China!

Caiti found a rather useful site about packing for college here. It’s very well thought. It’s a little OTT to us in some areas, but then it’s aimed at a US audience who presumably needs to take more with them to college than we do in France, but has come up things we’d never have thought of otherwise and can see the value of including. Thanks to the list she has a nice little first aid kit, which I probably wouldn’t have thought about, and a full set of useful documents in a file.

On the subject of documents, I had a busy afternoon at the scanner/copier. How did we get by in the old day, I wonder? These machines are indispensable these days, especially in France where you need copies of a dozen documents for the most basic of demands. To obtain entrance into Caiti’s room in the hall of residence, not only does she have to produce a vast array of forms but as her guarantor for the rent I’m also having to provide a sizeable dossier too – passport, proof of domicile, RIB (bank details) and proof of recent earnings. I had to copy out a very long paragraph of text on the guarantee form. It has to be handwritten or else!

So it’s hotting up here! Not much more to do – in theory – but I dare say we’ll think of something we’ve forgotten at the last moment. C’est la vie !