old friends

I'm at the hotel - wifi! I am linked to the planet - "a ta tribu," to your tribe, as my friend Jean-Louis said the other night. Here we are, en famille, on Sunday night.

In Gentilly avec la famille Daudier - my father and Jacques Daudier met and became lifelong friends at the Cite Universitaire in 1946. We lived in an apartment beneath Jacques and his family's when we came to live here for a year in 1964. Jean-Louis was then 10 and his younger brother Francois, next to me, was 5 - so just little pests to me then. Now they're interesting thoughtful men with 5 children between them. Jacques died a year after my dad, in 1989, a month after his middle son Laurent died suddenly of an aneurysm. Henriette his wife is now 90 and going strong, still living in the same apartment. And that's JL's lovely and warm wife Claire in the background - my parents and I were at their wedding in 1979. Okay, time for your history test.