Half an elephant and not-so-smart mice

The kids brought home handbills; posters were pasted on walls; and on Saturday, a small car with a large loudspeaker on its roof made a tour of the village, fuzzily blaring the news: a parc de loisirs was coming to town. Quincy and I studied a flyer carefully. Among the various spectacles and amusements, we figured the kids would be especially excited about the objets gonflables – a phrase that we assumed, correctly, to be a French way of talking about "bouncy castles." As for me, I was intrigued by the promise of Sourisland – a "village miniature de souris savants!" Because, you know, if there's one thing more entertainingly surreal than a miniature village, it's a miniature village populated by preternaturally smart mice.

The parc de loisirs was set up in a dusty parking lot next to the gasoline station. There was a small circus tent and four large inflatables, each as big as a house. Despite all the pre-parc publicity, there weren't a lot of people there. Which is not surprising, given that Cotignac is a sleepy little town. Also, a lot of families probably preferred to spend their sunny Sunday afternoon on amusements that didn't cost 8 euros per child (but only 5 euros for grown-ups!). Quincy and I got our money's worth by relaxing in the weeds at the edge of the lot, leaning against a makeshift fence, and watching the action on the inflatables. Which was mostly stuff like this: Jasper slides to the bottom of a giant inflatable sinking ship. Maddox too. Jasper takes off running, in shoeless stocking feet, across the dusty gravel in the direction of a giant inflatable chicken. Maddox, also in his socks, stumbles across the gravel after her.

The gonflables scene went on until a loudspeaker called everyone into the tent, where a series of entertainments began to unfold. As they unfolded, it became abundantly clear that the whole thing was very much a mom-and-pop-and-their-collection-of-kids operation (the dad and the kids provided the entertainment, while mom sold popcorn and cotton candy from a cart outside) which made me enjoy it all the more.

It started with the trained goat. It appears that this is de rigeur among carnies in the south of France: A scrawny goat with gigantic distended teats balancing upon an increasingly tall stack of increasingly tiny stools. Then there was the teenage daughter of the troupe, dressed for burlesque, walking on a wire and twirling a dozen hula-hoops. At one point, Jasper leaned back and whispered, "She would be more beautiful if she didn't have braces." I reflected on my own metal-mouthed high-school years of braces and retainers and headgear. "Hey kid, don't be so judgmental," I wanted to warn Jasper, "That's you in about 5 years, minus (I hope) the sequined bikini."

After she was done, the patriarch (and head clown) invited the audience into the ring so that we could try our own amateurish luck at hula-hooping. We were all comically bad at it. And some of us were comically badder than others. I'm told that I attracted an especially loud set of laughs when, after failing to spin the hoop around my waist, I tried to spin it around my neck by jerkily jackhammering my head back and forth like some sort of spastic woodpecker.

There was one little boy, though, maybe about Maddox's age, who was amazingly adept, and kept his hoop spinning perfectly with a confident rapid rhythm that reminded me of a masturbating monkey I once saw at a zoo. After we all gave him a big round of applause, it was revealed that he was a ringer: He was the youngest of the circus siblings, and this was his dad's amusing way of introducing him. A few minutes later, though, the boy wasn't feeling so great. While his two older brothers – dressed like identical homeless mimes – showed off some elaborate balancing skills on piles of barrels and planks, the 4-year-old nearly collapsed in tears while trying unsuccessfully to set up his own apparatus on the uneven ground. This led to some vivid acting-out in the direction of his dad who was trying simultaneously to energetically emcee the show and to keep the whole thing from becoming a train-wreck of predictable family dynamics, and who was doing it all while wearing a ludicrous orange shag-carpet wig.

Things soon got back on track with another crowd-pleasing piece of audience participation, in which Jasper played a prominent role. This particular act involved a dancing elephant. Except that it wasn't a real dancing elephant. It was two people bending over with an elephant-shaped sheet fitted over them, blindly following a bewigged clown's Svengali-like instructions to kneel down and to stand up, to trot and to boogie and, inevitably, to fall over sideways in a hysterical heap. Jasper was half of that elephant. Specifically: the back half.

I found it all entirely cheesy and delightful and worth every centime, but I did wonder if we were ever going to see that miniature village of super-smart mice. After all that audience participation, I was starting to half-seriously think that there weren't any precocious rodents after all, that "souris savants" wasn't to be taken literally, that maybe it was just some ironic euphemism meaning, loosely, "easily-gulled country folk who pay good money to become spastic woodpeckers and elephants' asses in front of their friends and neighbors."

But I was wrong. Sourisland did indeed exist, and it was finally unveiled after a second sweaty round of bouncy castle fun. Yep, it was a miniature village all right, with a school and a church and post office and all. But the mice inside it didn't seem so savants. Aside from climbing a tiny ladder and sliding down a tiny slide, they didn't show off any special skills. They mostly just stuck their heads in and out of the tiny windows of the tiny buildings, and pooped their tiny turds all over the tiny streets. Big deal; I could do that myself.

The secret waterfall

Is there a scene in some adventure tale that depicts a secret cave hidden behind a waterfall? In a Tintin book maybe? (Or Lord of the Rings? Or Planet of the Apes?) It seems like an iconic image anyway, but I just can't place it. All I know is that when I was a kid I wanted to discover a secret cave behind a waterfall, and explore it.

There are lots of caves around here in southern France. Cotignac butts right up against a massive cliff that is full of holes. Some of these holes, high up, are home to hundreds of swifts that dart and swirl in the skies in search of insects. Lower down are bigger caves, hollowed out hundreds of years ago by local troglodytes. Some of these caves are still used today by people who own houses up against the cliff, although they use them in fairly pedestrian ways – as garages, for instance, or to store patio furniture. Not exactly Tintin-esque.

There are also waterfalls around. A nearby town – Sillans la Cascade – is named for its huge waterfall, which is a popular destination for weekend walkers. Although, before you get to the deep blue-green pool at the base of those falls, you encounter several barriers with scare signs posted on them. Danger de chute! Acces interdit! Things like that. But there are wide paths worn around those blockades. That's one thing I appreciate about France: It's a relatively less litigious environment than North America, and so people have easy access to potentially dangerous places like abandoned mills, ruined castles, and slippery cliffs. Sure, there might sometimes be signs warning you away, and sometimes even easily-breachable barriers, but they come across as little more than half-hearted municipal suggestions. Nothing to really stop you.

There are waterfalls right here in Cotignac too. There is an easy well-worn path to one of them, and we've been many times. And there's another one too, which isn't exactly unknown, but also isn't exactly easy to get to. It's hidden high up along one side of the cliff, and there's no real path, and I think it might be on private property anyway. Jasper and I finally made it to this "secret waterfall" one recent weekend while Maddox was having an all-afternoon play-date at Hannah's house, and Quincy was enjoying a rare opportunity to have the house to herself. To get to the waterfall, Jasper and I had to beat our way through tall grasses and vines and wild roses along a barbed-wire fence, and then scramble steeply up over crumbling shale alongside a sharply cascading stream. Jasper is a strong climber, and a sensible one too. More than once, as we fumbled for footholds in the slippery rock, she suggested that we stop. "It's too dangerous, Dad," she'd say, "Let's go back before one of us gets hurt." Fair enough. But if she was gonna talk precociously like a parent, I had to respond like an eight-year kid – "Oh come on, just a little bit higher? Please?" – and after three or four dodgy maneuvers, we hauled ourselves up to a large hollowed-out bowl shrouded by trees in the side of the cliff, with the waterfall suddenly thundering down above us and gathering in a wide pool at our feet.

A couple of days later, Eric and I revisited Jasper's secret waterfall while the kids were at school. It was then that we discovered the secret caves as well. There were multiple entrances, including a big one carved into the dry cliff on the far side of the pool, and even one small wet one – barely big enough for a malnourished troglodyte to slip through – partially hidden behind the roaring plume of the waterfall itself. We resolved to come back the next day again, with Jasper, and with headlamps.

And so, the next afternoon, Eric and Jasper and I set off on foot one more time toward the secret waterfall. It really is a lovely walk. Deep-throated croaks of bullfrogs lurking in shallow pools choked with mosses and algae. Black-and-white skittery flashes of magpies in the fig trees. Weedy fields dotted with red poppies and purple irises and rustling stalks of wheat. We munched on tender shoots of wild fennel. We talked about that time many years ago, when Eric and I, along with our friend Noodles, set out with flashlights to explore the abandoned tunnels of a long-defunct iron mine carved deep inside a Connecticut hillside. Some previous trespasser had done the dirty work of cutting through and bending back the steel bars that were supposed to keep foolhardy teenagers like us out of the mine. So only common sense – which we chose not to possess that day – could have prevented us from risking our lives inside the lightless subterranean obstacle course tricked out with sharp stones and broken ladders and deep vertical shafts that appeared suddenly at our feet.

There wasn't quite so much danger lurking behind the secret waterfall here in Cotignac. The caves didn't go very deep. Most of them were pretty well waterlogged, and the one dry tunnel ended in a cave-in after about 15 meters. So, while it was definitely fun and exciting, it's wasn't exactly like my iconic comic book imaginings. No Tintin in pleated pants disappearing through a waterfall with an old-fashioned flashlight in his hands and an exclamation mark above his head. No Snowy with a worried look. No Captain Haddock making a blustering hash of things. And as we explored, we had to be wary of broken glass. Because, of course, Jasper's secret waterfall isn't exactly a secret to people who've grown up in Cotignac. Evidence suggests that local teenagers have been climbing up here for years, to explore, to carve the cliff face with their names and initials and earnest declarations of unrequited love, and to party.

A car is not a truck, in ANY language.

It looks like it is going to be up to me to actually share some reality with you, our gentle readers. Those Schaller brothers have a way of encouraging each other to stray farther and farther from actual events! Sheesh.

I know it has been ages and ages since I have blogged. I thought Erica was doing an excellent job replacing me for a time. But it is becoming very clear (as noted above), that it is time for me to dust off my laptop and get to it.

So, our friends Bob, Erica & West & Donald, Jane, Cara & Caity Rose have all headed off. Not quite home, but to other, greener pastures. And then within less than 48 hours Mark’s brother and belle-soeur, Eric and Paulette, replaced them. So, thankfully, we will not have to face being in Provence alone for some months.

I think the rash of good-byes disturbed Maddox a little bit. A day or two after the great exodus, while I was tucking Maddox in bed for a nap, I had an amusing conversation with him. Why is it all the best conversations happen at tuck-in time? Anyway, it started with him wondering if he will still have to take naps when he is a teenager. I assured him that while he wouldn’t have to, he would probably want to. He looked at me like I was insane. Then he went on to point out that Jasper would be a teenager before him, and then stated that Jasper would die first. At this “realization” he looked crushed and said, “But I always want to have Jasper! I don’t want her to die first!” And of course, as a loving, empathic parent I wanted to take that pain away. I managed to catch myself before I said, “Well, maybe it will be OK and you will die first.” Geez! What was I thinking!? But what are you supposed to say? I ended up saying something pretty lame like, “It’s just best not to think about it.” So lame.

Speaking of lame, I have been continuing to be involved with outings with l’ecole maternelle. Last week I went on another hike with his class. Overall it seemed to go much better than my first. For one thing, I already had all those helpful imperative commands under my belt (“Arrete!” “Avance” etc). It was a lovely hike up over a near-by hill with really breathtaking views across a valley. At the end of the day, a number of the kids, from the petit class especially, several of whom have not yet seen their third birthday, were so tired as to be stumbling more than walking. Like some sort of mini Bataan Death March.

Towards the end of the hike, we were walking along a road that carried some traffic. So, every once in a while a car would come by. I saw a vehicle coming so I yelled out, “Attention! Une voiture!” After I yelled it, I looked up to see two absolutely indignant 3-year olds with thunderclouds hovering over their wee heads. They looked at me, aghast and said, “THAT is NOT a car! That is a truck!!” (translated here for your ease of reading). I was pretty tired myself, which may be why I barely stifled my eye-roll and “puh-lease” and found myself saying, “C’est la même chose!” (It’s the same thing). It turns out, thems fighting words in the 3-year-old set in any country. I didn’t catch all of what they said in response, but it is probably just as well. Let’s just say their already low opinion of me, dropped even farther. You see, my lameness continues.

Last Tuesday I had my first swimming lesson with Maddox’s class. You may recall that I got myself “certified” to be an official parent helper on the insane trips to the pool with l’ecole maternelle. Yes, these crazy people actually knowingly get into a pool with 40 some children, none of whom actually know how to swim. For me, my first day was a real trial-by-fire sort of experience. For the first time on one of these excursions I was paired with someone who didn’t speak a lick of English. I thought to myself, (with some effort), “OK, this is good. This will be good practice for my French.” And to just ratchet up the challenge of it; the powers that be chose to give me and my partner more kids than anyone else had.

All the kids were wearing waterwings, which helped a lot. Most of the kids were very comfortable flopping around in the water with the wings as support. Not Maddox. He has always viewed water wings with a jaundiced, distrustful eye. As a result he clung to me like a barnacle during much of the open water activities.

Some of the activities were pretty bizarre and chaotic. The first of which was “Pirate Boat” which involved two thin rubber boats (really, more like mats), a bunch of water noodles as swords, and then total chaos while all 9 kids writhed and smacked each other in the head with noodles and knocked each other off the boats. Maddox was absolutely terrified. And really, I couldn’t blame him. But it did make it harder for me to be of reasonable help with the other 8 kids I needed to keep from drowning.

Well, in the end, no kid died on my watch. And the only tears were the ones I caused in my own kid (so that hardly counts, right? I mean, that happens almost every day around here.). And it was good for my French. I even learned a new phrase – “Attachez-vous!” (put on your seat belt). So, I guess it was a good day.

In which Mark has the pleasure of introducing another guest blogger: His brother Eric (!)

Introductory note from Mark: After 30 long hours of vacancy, our guest house is occupied again. This week, it's Eric and Paulette. Eric is famous for endlessly imagining that he suffers from dry flaky skin on the soles of his feet, and for being a ridiculously talented renaissance man. Viz: He's not only a professor of biology at an esteemed Ivy League institution, he's also an accomplished artist (with a peculiar affection for sizeable cephalopods). And now, as further evidence of his all-around multi-media virtuosity, Eric has the honor of being only the third person in human history to be a guest blogger for "Our French Files." His narrative – which will begin in mere seconds – offers a lightly fictionalized account of exactly how he and Paulette have been spending their time with us here in the south of France. Here's Eric:


It is Friday, the week of the Cannes Film Festival, and we spent today the same way as we have the last three days. We left our home base in Cotignac driving first along the tight two-lane asphalt roads that wind through the tiny hilltop villages of northern Provence, then finally turning onto a narrow dirt track that ends at a wrought iron gate with massive stone posts: the entrance to Chateau Miraval, sometime home of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Here we dropped off Maddox, purple pillow in hand, and instructing him to toss this into the air. Leaving him behind, we then backed down the track until we found a convenient spot to park off the shoulder and out of sight. We then hiked the quarter mile back to where we had dropped off Maddox and hid ourselves behind some low-lying fig trees and watched what transpired.

Most days this has been nothing. No cars entering or exiting the gate; only the occasional sound of a helicopter, taking off first thing in the morning and then returning late at night, our only affirmation that Brangelina are indeed currently in residence.

Maddox to his credit has been a real trooper, tossing the pillow repeatedly into the air and counting off each catch in binary ("1, 10, 11, 100, 101, 110, ...") as if he were a human computer. We had considered placing this rather arduous task upon the slightly more doughty shoulders of young Jasper, but precociousness seems more precocious in a four-year-old than an eight-year-old.

As I said, most days nothing has transpired, and we have driven back home with our tired little nephew curled in Quincy’s lap, already asleep and his stiff arms protruding rather pathetically outward like two of the local thick-crusted baguettes. But as I say Maddox has been a real trooper and, like us, returns inspired each morning to take up his post. Ah, the bright hope that springs eternal in a young man’s breast! And today it finally paid off. The pillow tossing, please understand, is nothing but an attention-grabber, just the sort of thing to induce a chauffeur-driven Lamborghini to slow down, and an all-too-well-known passenger to roll down her tinted window and inquire as to the boy’s provenance. At first Maddox does not pause in his well-rehearsed task, continuing to robotically count ever upwards ("... 1111101, 1111110, 1111111, 10000000, 10000001, ...") just long enough to bring a ample-lipped A-list celebrity to full attention. This boy knows binary! He will be a good influence on my brood!

Celebrities know how to seize the moment, as well as a young boy it turns out. Maddox was swept up into the sports car, the day's trip to Cannes forgotten or postponed, and the car with scarcely a sound retreated back up the hillside, past fields of low-lying grape vines, terraced olive groves, until it disappeared behind the gate of the courtyard of the elegantly elephantine Chateau Miraval.

Then there was nothing for us to do but to wait. Which we did in the nearby town of Correns, drinking at a café that serves only organic wine, in our case a most pleasing and delicate Rose, crisp as an apple and light as spring sunshine. Jasper, not to be outdone in seizing the joy of the day, drank a delicious organic chocolate milk shake and ate some of the sweetest pastries ever concocted by a French patisserie. Mark paid for it all with some antique and now highly sought-after French francs. At about eight in the evening, just as the daylight began to fade, we returned to where we last saw Maddox. He was there already, awaiting us, chewing on a stalk of wild fennel and seated on the same pillow we left with him.

The boy was tired, sweaty, and dirty, and dearly in need of a bath. But first he must tell us all of his miraculous day inside the gates of celebrity. And indeed he had much to tell. There was a never-ending film reel titled “Notice to the Academy” that showed scenes of Angelina Jolie from her star turns in Tomb Raider and Beowolf, and which elegantly made the point that some stars have had their performances digitally enhanced to good effect well before Avatar took the world by storm. Then there was the actual suit of armor that Brad Pitt wore in Troy. Our little nephew even got to try it on! A little known Hollywood secret: the armor for all its realism is made of plastic and is surprisingly light; all credit to the acting acumen of the estimable Mr. Pitt for giving it the appearance of weighty metal. Then, finally, Maddox informed us, there were the hours of backbreaking labor down in the vineyards, working shoulder to shoulder with the other juvenile members of the expatriate Hollywood horde. The gnarled vines are trained low to the ground and children, it turns out, are of just the right height to assist in the pruning. Hard work no doubt, but the children do it with nary a peep of protest, inspired by the promise that they will all, one day, appear in an upcoming advertisement for the United Colors of Benetton!

Yes, our nephew Maddox is now immortalized on the internet! And we as well just for knowing him. Some vacation! Check it out at http//www.maddox.r.traveler.joie.com/home.


Afterword from Mark: Hmmm. You'll recall that when I was introducing Eric earlier, I characterized his narrative as "lightly fictionalized." Upon further reflection, I realize that I used the word "lightly" loosely, and more-or-less as a synonym for "almost entirely." There are two things, though, that are kind of true: (1) Eric did have the bizarre idea that it might be fun to teach Maddox how to count in binary code, and (2) Maddox was scarily quick to pick up this almost entirely useless and socially debilitating skill. Thanks Eric.

When I paint my masterpiece

We took a picnic lunch up to the hilltop ruins of Castellas à Forcalqueiret a few days ago, and it was pretty darn awesome. That night, as Quincy and I were putting the kids to bed, I was reflecting enthusiastically on the day. "I love ruined castles," I said. The kids had their own opinions. Said Maddox: "I love castles what aren't ruined and have bakeries inside them."

Meanwhile, we're hoping that our house here in Cotignac doesn't become a ruin itself before we're done with it. It's a rental, after all. It's not like we're bad renters, but things do break down. (We bought a brand new coffee maker to replace the one that succumbed, on our watch, to years of calcium deposits from the famously hard French tap-water). And things just break, period – especially on these stone-hard floors. Cups, saucers, plates, bowls. Hell, last week we broke 3 wine glasses in just one single evening. (I realize that makes us suddenly sound like we're Def Leppard trashing a hotel room here, but I assure you, there is a legitimate and non-drunken-debauchery explanation for each and every bit of breakage.)

We're especially attentive to breakage because of all the kids passing through our house. Our friends Donald and Jane arrived in Cotignac a few days ago, with their daughters Cara and Caity Rose, both of whom are at the ages (like our own kids) where hands and feet seem especially likely to seek out and slash themselves on any stray shard of broken crockery. Plus, Bob and Erica are here as well, with baby West; and West is at the age where he explores his expanding world by putting everything possible in his mouth. Anyway, keeping things pristine is a bit of a chore, what with our doors open to the terrace all to the time, and the breezes blowing, and kids tromping in and out. Luckily, the mottled terracotta floor-tiles disguise most of the dirt, so it doesn't look quite as filthy as it always is. The flip side, though, is that we're sometimes reminded of that hidden filth in ways that are, well, just a bit horrifying. Like the other day when Erica heard West half-gagging on something and, upon extricating that something from his mouth, discovered it to be an old Bandaid.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the rest of us, Maddox yesterday decided to re-decorate his bedroom with a crayon, and he spent the better part of the morning doing so. His bedroom is a sizeable estate, including (and I'm only exaggerating the slightest bit) his own antechamber, bathroom, and office, as well as the bedroom itself. That's a lot of walls to cover with crayon. And he covered them all with a series of designs that, while not exactly sophisticated, were impressively coherent in style and motif. Mostly they were cycles of loops and swoops and rounded humps – like an endless series of hills seen from afar, or the world's largest herd of purple elephants – plus a few generous X's and hearts for visual punctuation.

And of course, because this house isn't actually ours, it's all illicit graffiti. It's not allowed. We punished him by sending him down the street, with Jasper and Cara and Caity Rose, to spend several hours playing with clay in the studio of a local potter. He loved it (that'll teach him). They all loved it. Meanwhile, I spent a good chunk of my afternoon with a sponge and bucket of soapy water.

Carnaval

On the weekend before we went to beach, there was Carnaval. It's a very big deal in Cotignac. It started Saturday morning with a parade, and lasted through nightfall when, down in the dirt field where the old men play at boules, there was a burning-in-effigy of a gigantic tissue-paper gingerbread man – a spectacle that maybe symbolized something but, if so, I don't know what. In any case, the burning of this faux-confectionary effigy started and ended so quickly that Quincy and Maddox and I (arriving late to the boulodrome) missed it entirely. Jasper was there though, and she said it was awesome.

We'd been anticipating Carnaval for weeks and weeks. The kids had been advised, through endless flyers sent home from school, to dress in déguisements. In the days leading up to the big day, we could watch a massive truck-sized dragon – a parade float – being built in the garage across the street from our house. Maddox loved peeking in on the emerging monster as it got a freshly painted coat of bright green scales and a bright red mouth. Eventually, the dragon even breathed fire (well, okay, just smoke).

On the morning of Carnaval itself, Jasper and Maddox mustered at their respective schools along with every kid in Cotignac. They were all in costume. The theme this year had something to do with myths and legends and fables and fairytales, and I suspect that this theme was made explicit in order to cut back on the number of kids dressed up as Spiderman and Iron Man. There were still a few, of course. But mostly there were lots of princesses and pirates, and lots of medieval knights waving cardboard swords. Jasper was the Mad Hatter – although, with her oversized flamboyant floppy hat, she might easily have passed for a pimp informant instead, or Bootsy Collins.

Maddox was a pirate and, as is his fashion, he wore his eyepatch well up on the top of his head, where it looked less like a pirate's eyepatch and more like a lopsided homemade yarmulke, or maybe some sort of embarrassingly weird unnecessary toupee.

Quincy borrowed one of my many bandanas to make herself a last-minute pirate costume as well, and she marched in the parade along with Maddox and his classmates from l'école maternelle. In fact, Quincy found herself suddenly appointed a parade marshal of some sort, which was a little scary because it suggested that she would be burdened with lots of opaque responsibilities. But, ultimately, her primary responsibility seemed simply to wear an orange armband.

The parade was led by a car full of blood-donation enthusiasts dressed up as corpuscles. (They looked a lot like Woody Allen as a giant sperm in that famous movie scene from 1972, except bright red instead). The red corpuscles were followed by a rag-tag massive mob of schoolchildren, all in costume, and some of them riding elaborately decorated bicycles and scooters as well. There were also various grown-up groups too, including an enthusiastic troupe of French cowboy dancers (who later would please the crowds in semi-synchrony to the tune of "Achy Breaky Heart") dressed up in the kind of ornate West Coast western wear once favored by Gram Parsons and the Flying Burrito Brothers. Bringing up the rear were a few whimsical floats, including one with a human-sized deck-of-cards, and another that appeared to be celebrating some sort of vaguely sexual union between Pocahontas and The Big Bad Wolf (and maybe the three little pigs too; it was pretty high-concept). Finally, tugged by a tractor, came the smoke-belching dragon itself, accompanied by confetti-tossing wig-wearing dragon-wranglers and a set of massive speakers blaring out songs by the Rolling Stones. After a few slow boisterous processions around town, the parade petered out, the dragon and wolf and Queen of Hearts parked themselves on the sidewalks, and tout le monde spent the rest of the day milling festively around the central square, eating crêpes, drinking drinks, and bouncing on the bouncy castle.

Later, when I asked the kids what their favorite parts of Carnaval had been, Maddox singled out the bouncy castle. Jasper especially liked the burning gingerbread man. She also really liked it when the costume contest awards were announced: She and her MadHatterBootsyPimp outfit won second prize.

The prize itself turned out to be a flimsy pen and spiral notebook, and she loves them both. She has begun to fill the notebook with the first lines of a book that she says she's writing. It's got illustrations too.

I'm reminded of when I was a kid, living in Pakistan in the early 1970s, when my brother Eric and I were both deeply under the influence of Spiderman and Fantastic Four and the Silver Surfer, and one day we decided to draw our own superhero comic books. We were on a 3-week road trip with my dad, from Lahore up the Karakoram Highway into the Hindu Kush. (It's here, by the way, that Quincy and Erica and Doug Kenrick all start rolling their eyes skyward as I dip knowing into my deep reservoir of self-parody.) With the snowy peaks of Rakaposhi and Nanga Parbat towering over us, Eric and I hunched for hours over our notebooks, drawing muscular panels modeled after the familiar formulas of Marvel Comics: the predictable super-powers that arise from random accidents, the sudden super-villains with their ludicrous names, the dumb dialogue.

Jasper, happily, has chosen to go in a rather different direction in her first book. Her book reads like this: Once upon a time, there was a bunny who lived in the blakberry bushs at Jericho beach. On the other side of the beach, there was a house and in that house, lived a cat. Now it just hapyned that one day they met. The bunny said "who are you?" Then the cat said "I'm Srauberry. Who are you?" "I'm Buttercup" said the Bunny. "do you whant to play eneathing Buttercup" asked Srauberry. "No" replied Buttercup.

So far, that's it; but it's only been a week, and Jasper's been pretty busy with school and other entertainments. She hasn't really had the time to work out exactly how to move her narrative forward in the face of Buttercup's curt indifference. My Pakistani superhero comic never made it past its second page. Jasper's book may, or may not, run longer than that.

More guest bloggin' from Erica Ellis! (accompanied by unnecessary interjections from Mark)

Introductory note from Mark: Yep, Bob and Erica and West are still here, drinking wine and eating cheeses (or, in West's case, drinking breastmilk and eating mashed prunes) with us here in France; and Erica is proving to be an indefatigable guest-blogger. But this time I'm not just sitting back and let her spin her fanciful factual tales. I'll be interjecting occasionally, in outraged blue. But first, here's Erica...

The Island of Pork Roll

We have just returned today from a brief vacation – a break from both the gruelling sabbatical that Mark and Quincy are enduring and our little sojourn abroad. We all felt the need to escape the hustle and bustle of Cotignac and retreat to the peaceful environs of St. Tropez and surrounds. OK I’ll stop with the tongue in cheek (who am I? Mark???).

Whaddayamean "tongue in cheek"? This is a blog, dammit, a blog, and I take it dead seriously. Jeezum peezum, we provide Erica with space on our blog (precious precious space; the internet doesn't grow on trees, you know) and she uses this hallowed forum to fling insults at me and my blogging style? I'm outraged! And she does it without even once mentioning footnotes or J.D. Salinger or my parody-able penchant for reflecting back on my childhood experiences overseas? I'm speechless.

But seriously, we decided that we would all head to the beach while Bob and I were here. Quincy located a lovely little seaside "campground," about 1-hour’s drive away. Not only did this place promise easy beach access but also the famed island of Porquerolles (promptly dubbed profiterole, or pork roll for short) was just a short ferry ride away.

The only twist in our plan was that our friend Carol was also coming on this trip, which put us one person over what the excellent Renault Scenic wagon could carry. So we embarked on an ambitious plan involving a one-way car rental and return train ride back to Geneva for Carol, leaving us with the requisite 7 people for the return trip to Cotignac, and the need to pack really, really light (turns out by the time you pack the Scenic full with 7 people you’ve pretty much used up most of the room for baggage).

Okay, that's better. No more flinging of insults at poor ol' Mark. Good too that Erica is back on firmer footing here: Expressing her love for our car. Which, by the way, really did a splendid job of handling all seven of us and all our stuff. And, despite the need to pack light, it actually wasn't a small amount of stuff at all. We had to provide our own bedding at the beachside camping cabins we rented. That's a lot of pillows and blankets we had to jam into the car, including a bizarrely oversized thick duvet for Bob and Erica that ended up being about sixteen times bigger than their bed itself. Plus an entire crib for baby West. And my computer too, so that Erica could compose this litany of insults and grievances that we have so generously allowed her to post on our blog.

On the whole, I would say that this restricted luggage idea paid off for us since our "cabins" [tiny mobile homes: the “RapidHome”] at the "campground" were enchantingly small. Like living on a boat I imagine: 2-ft wide doorways, bedrooms hardly larger than the beds, etc. I particularly liked the arrangement of the two bedroom doorways at 90 degrees to each other so that no sooner had you crashed through one doorway (say at 2 AM to get a crying baby) then you had to crash right into the next one more or less within the same step. I say crash because I’m not entirely convinced that we could walk through the doorway face on, and particularly not while carrying West, so there was a fair number of impacts with the door frame. It didn’t help too much that our whole mobile home was listing slightly so that one of the doors always wanted to shut and the other always wanted to swing open.

Meanwhile, over in the Schaller/Young unit, Jasper and Maddox were sharing a room roughly the size of a coffee table. Now, when I was a kid (living in the Serengeti, traveling the Karakoram Highway, reading and re-reading "The Catcher in the Rye" that one summer in Brazil, et cetera, et cetera, et parody-able cetera), my brother Eric and I always shared a room and I was used to it. But not Jasper and Maddox. They live like royalty. In Vancouver they have their own rooms. Here in Cotignac, they not only have their own rooms, they have their own bathrooms. Maddox even has his own office! So it was a bit of an adjustment for them to sleep in such tight quarters, on beds so slim that, one night at 3 a.m., Maddox actually fell right out of bed and cut his face on the floor. Luckily, it didn't really bleed much, because we needed to save our bandages for his various cuts and scrapes on his hands and feet and knees. Happily, injuries heal. Insults, however – especially parenthetical remarks about someone else's blogging style – well, they just hurt and hurt and hurt.

However, much as we may have felt that the quarters were perhaps on the tight side, West was a big, big fan of the "RapidHome": lots of smooth faux-bamboo flooring to worm around on, built-in doorstops to chew on, and easy access to the outdoor deck with its rubber doormat (yum). And the campground was delightfully quiet. Or at least it was until they started into three solid days of continuous chain-sawing of the trees at the front.

There was also that pesky seagull that kept hanging around, hoping to steal some of the food we were eating at our outdoor tables. Carol especially seemed leery of the lingering bird. At one point I jokingly threatened to toss some cheese rinds on the roof of Carol's cabin, and she in return happily threatened to sneak out at midnight and slather peanut butter all over the roof of ours. "How would you like that?" she warned. I told her that I'd like it very much – that, in fact, I'd actually pay money to have her spend her night smearing peanut butter all over our roof, because it would be one helluva funny thing to blog about. Although, of course, Erica would probably just make fun of it later, leaving me deeply, deeply hurt.

Bob and I had scoped out the beach on Google Earth and were pretty excited about our second trip to the Mediterranean. We had previously hiked the Cinque Terra in 2004 and had really loved that deep blue colour, so different from our local ocean in Vancouver. As we walked down to the beach on the first day, we exited the seaside forest and took in the vista and were taken aback by what looked like endless drifts of brown garbage. Blech! The stuff formed spongy piles as much as 3 ft high all up and down the beach, and getting into the ocean required a trip both on top of the dried portion and then through the sludgy mass at the water’s edge. The source of the drifts was a bit of a mystery until we read an informative sign: meet Posidonia oceanica, a sea grass. It probably goes without saying that the kids looooved it – kind of like playing in piles of dead leaves in the fall. The weirdest thing about this stuff is that in addition to drifts of dead biomass, it forms these little balls of fibre, some as big as baseballs, that also line the beaches. If the berms of dead and rotting seaweed hadn’t put us off the local beach, the realization that West + sandy beach = non-stop parental management kind of extinguished our remaining desire/ability to hang out peacefully a la plage. Luckily, the peninsula was encircled almost entirely by a hiking path (le Sentier Littoral), which we availed ourselves of and much fun was had by all…

It was fun. I think Erica was finding it especially delightful because, while hiking the trail, she was also thinking about how she would blog enthusiastically about it later and how she would use that blog to make parenthetical remarks strategically designed to insult – indeed to wound – one famously small-headed and thin-skinned friend.

Our daytrip to the island of Porquerolles was also hectically fun – nothing like carting around a nap-deprived baby to put some extra "verve" into your sightseeing! However, West was generally quite a good sport and survived his first bike trip (sans helmet bien sur). There are very few cars on the island so the only way to get to the various gorgeous beaches is to hoof it or rent bikes. I didn’t expect that the roads would be quite as rustic as they were, but then without cars I’m guessing there’s not much impetus to do a whole lot of paving and upkeep. West’s bike seat had springs underneath it, and he spent much of his time in the seat chewing on the safety bar. We spent the afternoon at the Plage de Notre Dame, which was beautiful, although the name struck me as somewhat sacrilegious. And it turns out that a rocky beach is a much better bet with a baby – then all you have to do is to monitor the rock intake, direct him to relatively large stones, ply him with palm fronds and sticks, etc. Sand sucks. Carol and I were both struck with the feeling that we had been dropped into a James Bond movie: hot sun and sailboats anchored in turquoise water with good-looking tanned women sunning themselves on the decks (the Bond girls). We all agreed that we would be happy to come back and stay a lot longer – but never, ever any later in the summer than June. The Island of Pork Roll was already plenty hot in April, and it apparently gets a staggering 6,000 visitors A DAY in July and August. Gah.

Okay, I'm over it. Yes, of course, my mock-outrage was all tongue in cheek. Besides, from my perspective, there is no higher compliment than to be made fun of.

Anyway, I’ve barely scraped the surface of our escapades but I’m tired of typing. Got to save my reserves for another exhausting day in Provence tomorrow – wine-tasting, market, etc. You know how it is…

Oh yes, I know how it is. I know all too well. Meanwhile, let's all give a big hearty "thank you" to Erica, for keeping our blog lively and up to date, and for keeping it (mostly) clean.