Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor

We spent last week at Center Parcs just south of Paris. It was a good week overall with some nice moments with family and friends. It took us 7 hours to drive there last Monday (setting off at 5AM) and 7 hours getting back last Friday (arriving at around midnight). Whilst we were there we went swimming twice a day, lost Maxime, found Maxime, I almost drowned Gaston, Maxime almost drowned me, I cooked three times, I read precisely zero pages of the two books I had taken with me, and I also managed to go running zero times. One of the most interesting conversations of the week was when our group of four adults, two young parents, a student and a young 28 year old professional, considered what should be the right split in life between doing things you enjoy and doing things that are simply required of you. There was a general upbeat consensus that an 85/15 split felt about right. More revealing were the figures that people suggested reflected the current split they faced. They ranged from the 70/30 carefree student to the 15/85 over-worked parent with the successful professional being around 60/40. Even more interesting were peoples’ answer to the question what job would you do if you could choose all over again… the suggestions were illuminating and included a vet, a doctor for MSF (http://www.msf.org/), a mid-wife, and an owner of a old style British bed and breakfast to be located in Africa. The main conclusion that I drew was that career guidance on offer when I was a teenager was severely lacking! Maybe I’ll do a better job with Maxime, Capucine and Gaston if we manage to steer them successfully to adulthood.