On another occasion Mrs S and I walked into the usual empty restaurant, although this time it was not quite empty. In the middle of the dining room stood a pram that would not have been out of place in Kensington Gardens in about 1910. In the pram was Etienne, Florence and Jean-Paul's three months' old baby. And Etienne was not a happy baby. He was red in the face and screaming at full volume. Mrs S tried to calm him by rocking the pram while I started my tour of the village.
I never found Jean-Paul, but I did meet his daughter, Elise, and she succeeded in finding her mother. Mariette was perhaps the better of the two to find as she was able to calm Etienne – Mrs S not having managed it – at the same time as cooking our meal.
Jean-Paul was a great tribulation to Mariette in that when she had the next course ready for him to serve, he was frequently nowhere to be found. She finally came up with a solution and bought him a mobile phone, which gave Jean-Paul a chance to display his child-like enthusiasm for Christmas: he set the ring tone to play ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer'.
1 comment:
I don't think I could stand to hear that song at any time other than Christmas.
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