A squeezed wrinkled orange

What a week! Seven days ago my role of guardian angel officially kicked off: Giacomo & Alessio (James and Alex for the English audience) landed at Luton at 12.45pm. It was a hot and burning trip to and back the airport. Once at home, we had a BBQ on the balcony, kindly prepared by Lofty, followed by a visit to the local park (a recent pleasant discovery!). It is a rather small park, but well maintained and with golf and tennis pitches. We spent the rest of that evening indoors: all three boys busy in a play-station competition while I was busy with my things. Sunday started as an exhausting day: we went and meet the guys' host family, then on to the school, to my office and finally home again. This entire itinerary with the sole scope of showing them the circular way they would be likely to do over the following two weeks. We then headed to Piccadilly and left them there to explore the London *jungle*, whilst Lofty and I proceeded to Hyde Park for the O2 Festival featuring Goldfrapp and Depeche Mode. Monday was a rather quite day: I met G&A for lunch. In the evening I stayed at home and went to bed quite early. Tuesday I had my Spanish class after three months of break. I thought I would have forgotten everything, but it actually went quite well (on Friday I had the chance of practising with a chica de Madrid and understood everything she told me! Achievement!). Our teacher brought us a souvenir from Buenos Aires, a postcard and lush choco filled with liqueur--a very appreciated gesture. During our class we talked a lot about Buenos Aires and Argentinean habits and customs. On Wednesday I had an early start: I woke up at 5.30 to go and catch a direct train to Brussels where a meeting with a team of (German) authors was planned. It was a flash visit: train-taxi-three hours of meeting-taxi-train. Oh! And a lunch kindly offered by their law firm through which we kind of carried on working. The meeting was intense. We went through all the contractual clauses which now request my close attention to ensure that everything is fed back correctly to our Rights Manager ... and many other crucial tasks which will keep me busy over the next two weeks! On Thursday I had lunch together with the guys on the grass. They always make me laugh to death with all their remarks, observations and impressions about their British experience, and namely about their host-family, school and mates. In the afternoon, we had a nice picnic with my colleagues and their other halves in honour of Lisa who is leaving us to go back to her Country: NZ. Friday was an intense day at work which was thrilling and quite rewarding, *interluded* by a Thai lunch on the grass (guess with whom?) and followed by an exciting Italy game at an Italian pizzeria off Brick Lane. We were a big and cheerful group of friends. Giacomo seemed to enjoy himself a great deal. The only annoying down-light of that night was missing the tube and paying £40 for the taxi home ... Ah well! Today, the day started miserable: headache and arguments. It did not proceeded better with the England defeat. The boys joined us at the pub and then headed back home to watch the next match. We came back home too. Since then, Steve has been laying down in bed while I am distractedly watching the Brazil-France match while doing some house work. I am in need of a moral break. My brain and thoughts have been squeezed to their bones this week because of my demanding job and my role of the boys' supervisor. If this is only a vague taste of what being a mother is, I have a long way to go ...