“On a cold and damp September night, a car is making its way through the empty streets. On board were a man, a woman and a child aged 3; it was around midnight. The rain was battering the windshield and the car was going towards the Clinique Saint Martin in Pessac in the Bordeaux suburb. The woman had entered into labour and she was in an awful amount of pain. 

As soon as they arrived, the medical staff looked after the heavily pregnant woman and took her to the maternity ward. Outside in the deserted corridor the man was waiting with the child. This was not going to be easy as the baby pushing to come out was way too big to allow a natural birth. After a discussion with the man and the medical staff, it was considered to proceed with a Caesarean. This was because the baby coming to this world was big; very big. Around 4.5KG in fact, or just under 10 LB to give you an idea. This was not going to be an easy task!

But after 4 and a half long hours of intense suffering, at last the head came out naturally and eventually the very first breath of fresh air started to fill those lungs.”

“My father on the other hand was the third and the last of 3 sons of an ex-military officer. During World War 2 my grandfather was in the army and was posted in Algeria. During the war, he responded to the call of General De Gaulle and volunteered as a trainee pilot in order to fight back the Nazi invasion of Europe. Things being what they were at the time, he could not fight in France as the Vichy government had capitulated with the invaders and it was actively trying to dismantle the Resistance movement. Therefore the General De Gaulle, exiled in London and looking to gain international support, made an arrangement with Joseph Stalin, who had then turned his back on Hitler and was trying himself to push the Nazis back into dust. So the General de Gaulle offered to send some pilots to help the Russians fight back and of course Stalin agreed. The alliance was created and the Franco-Russian squadron was eventually called the Normandy-Niemen. This squadron still exist today. The General was sending new trainee pilots and Stalin was supplying the aircrafts and the mechanics. As you can imagine, none of the French pilots spoke any Russian and none of the Russians spoke any French. They used some rough translations and got to learn a few words in each other’s language. It must be tough when you are at war, by -40C and you can’t really communicate with your Russian mechanic. But as they fought alongside each other they learned to communicate and together they eventually pushed back the Nazis out of Russia and into the history books. I have always been impressed and I have a profound respect for what my grandfather and all the people like him have done. He never mentioned much about this to us.”

“At that time I was about to start my first year at school and my brother was about to start his third year. We were both schooled in a French school in Algiers. Although I learned to read write and speak French at the very beginning, we were still taught some Arabic in class. This is how I’ve learnt to speak a little bit of the language and I remember a few words today. We were also taught a nursery rhyme, kind of Humpty Dumpty song, but I’ve completely forgotten the lyrics. My mum was very keen to push all of us as much as possible at school. My brother was doing fine, but from the start I experience some difficulties at school, especially with reading, writing and calculations. Basically the whole program. So at the end of my first year, I was deemed not ready to progress and I had to redouble my first year. Following up on this, I remember my mum helping me with my homework, telling me to take a picture of the words and memorise them. She taught me how to read without my finger, she was very supportive and I cherished those moments with her. I wanted to make her proud and boy! Did I make her proud?”

“She had an idea of what it would be but when she opened the top of the box, the dog was seating looking up; he was so cute. The dog was a black and white Spaniel and we called him Voyou (or Thug).

That dog was always pulling on his leach to the point he couldn’t breathe making that loud noise, and he had a serious tendency of running away. One thing he loved at the embassy, was that pond I mentioned earlier on where my brother and I were catching the frogs from. My mum was always trying to keep this dog under control but he was just a ball of pure energy. And after running around in the embassy he would jump into the pond, infuriating my mum as the dog was going to stink in the car and she would have to wash him when we got home. Very often when he was being washed, he would escape from the bath tub and run away into the flat all wet. Cheeky sod! So we had to chase him and corner him so my mum could finish the wash and start cleaning the flat. On another occasion, he was laying, half asleep near the sofa and my sister gave him a stroke. With a sudden reflex, he turned towards her and bit her just under the right eye. Everyone was panicked and my mum way away from home, chatting with other mums. I had to run for her while my brother was doing what a 10 years old can do to stop the bleeding on my sister’s face. All this drama ended up with three stiches for my sister and a big scare. But it won’t be the last time Vouyou behave like a thug.”

“I remember one day for my birthday, my mum turned up in class with an awful lot of little cakes to share with all my classmates. She had arranged this with my teacher and I was completely over the moon. Is that not the best Mum in the world? As my sister is born just around mine, my parents organised both our birthday parties on the same day. This was a good idea to stop the conflict that I had around our birthdays being so close. And after that, my mum did the same for my sister and went to her school with some cakes for the whole class. But as the time went on, the cancer had spread and her condition was deteriorating quite quickly. When we were in Algeria, my parents had bought a brand new house, in La Loupe which was being rented out. To this day, I have never understood why my parents built so far away from their respective families. All my grandparents and most of my uncles were living in Mont de Marsan, and yet we ended up near Paris, where the weather is cold, grey and miserable. We were around 400 miles away from everyone. My parents were doing what was necessary to move into the house and eventually we moved out of the hotel. It was a big 4 bedroom house, the only detached house in the whole neighbourhood. It had a basement, garage, two floors and a big garden all around it. The only issue was the lack of fences around it. Do you remember that dog’s hobby I was referring to in the previous chapter? That bloody dog always found a way to escape and it was a nightmare to get him back into the house. We always had to go and try to catch him while he was running at a constant 30mph around the whole estate. Whatever the weather. Sometimes I even thought he was doing it on purpose! ”

“I was in the same class as her son so she knew something wasn’t right. She came to see me asking why I wasn’t at school. I tried to pretend that I wasn’t well but I’ll be able to look after myself. She told me to go home to bed and that she would pop to see me. I went home and got to bed and my best friend’s mum entered the house. We all knew each other’s mum well, err sorry, I knew my friend’s mum well and it such neighbourhood everyone looks after each other’s kids. But still, that lady noticed that I was in fact faking my illness. So she called my father who was at work, to tell him what had happened. My father got home in a speed record time and I got a major telling off and sent to school for the afternoon. Ironically, when I got the school gate, it was closed. So I rang the little doorbell but no one came! I thought to myself “this is definitely not a day for school”.

It was that same woman, my best friend’s mum, who discovered that we had started “smoking”. When you’re aged between 8 and 11 you don’t really swallow the smoke; you just puff on cigarettes. Anyway, my best friend got to his home stinking of tobacco as I just had my first puffs with him, with my brother and some other friends from the estate. So my best friend’s mum started to challenge him on his smell and his stinky breath and in no time he told her absolutely EVERYTHING! What a snitch!”

“Suddenly, there was a big BOOM out of nowhere! The Toyota was spinning uncontrollably, we could hear the tyres against the road screaming and the noise of broken glass. Eventually the Toyota finished by taking a big dive forward. I was seating in the middle of the backseat with a very loose safety belt. I was projected towards the passenger seat and landed my head against it. The momentum ended when my head hit the handbrake in the middle and I was prevented from being projected through the cockpit by my seatbelt. My father was projected toward the window and he smashed it with his head. When the car stopped my sister started crying and screaming. My brother was seating on my right and he escaped through the passenger window to his right. He then got on his feet and opened the sliding door so I could get out of the car. I did not touch my sister as I had already been told about the risks. When I got out of the car I checked myself for visible injuries but I looked fine. I was a bit knocked out but nothing broken. I looked at me brother and he was okay too. In the distance I could see another car who had pulled up in emergency; it had its warning lights on. We could see some smoke or some steam coming out of the bonnet and my father rushed to the car with a small fire extinguisher we had in our car.

While this was happening, I noticed that the step-mother was still inside the Toyota. I got near it by the passenger side and I asked her if she was alright. She said that she was fine, but as I looked down I could see some blood running down her right leg. My father was coming back to the car so I told him that she was injured. At this time there were no mobile phones and we were really in the middle of nowhere. We had to wait for a car to come about, stop it and drive to the first working telephone to call an ambulance. But eventually help came along and the step-mother was transferred to the nearest hospital.”

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