One Car!

Juan Carlos was born in Chile and he lived there long enough to grow the beard that now resides, with him, in the middle of a field not far from Martin who lives down the road.

When I say he lives in the middle of a field I really should say “in a house in the middle of a field” ‘cos that is where you will find his beard, and him.

His wife calls him Juan Ca for short and you will have to read that out loud and quickly to understand why most of the people in my family like to have a good giggle every time she does so.

Especially the teenagers (whom we are currently studying here on bitsnbobs.)

One of ours has just been summoned from his bed; it’s 7pm in the evening and the C.I.T.F (committee of impediment to teenage fun) has decided that even considering that school is out for summer, enough is enough.

You see, there was a party at Juan Carlo’s beard's place yesterday.

In celebration of 10 years residency in France and in recognition of his own teenage son’s birthday Juan Ca (giggle) decided to hang up the coloured lights, light the barbecue, invite the band, roll out the pizza dough (there is a homemade pizza oven in the garden courtyard) and invite the neighbours.

It was a typical French summer’s evening party for round these parts.

Martin turned up too early, at seven, way before the rest of us and he was ready to go by the time we all drifted in as night fell with bottles of wine, tortillas, apple tarts, bowls of salad and cake.

The youngest there had just about been born - the son of the Chinese Pole artist who lives in the village, and inadvertently already carrying a broken arm in a sling – and the oldest was, damm, probably me, no wait… I’m sure there was someone’s granddad there.

Teenagers slouched in exotic groups, children chased each other between the legs of the adults who ate and drank with oblivion.

My doctor was there!

I made an appointment for some acupuncture.

I also asked him which doctor he went to see when he was ill.

And we had a laugh.

Juan Ca we shouted together!

We left as Christoff was arriving and he gave us a lecture on how “ziz iz not ze time to be leaving a party but ze time for arriving her”.

Christoff is not English.

This morning Krissie had the luck to be the one who drove over to the smoking remains to recuperate our teenager.

She walked into the garden courtyard, which looks like something from Jean de Florette, and found a very long trestle table in the centre with about thirty assorted teenagers in various states of removed from reality staring at one another.

She just caught the end of her son’s contribution in which the words honesty and trust figured significantly.

Juan Carlos was in a corner hiding behind his beard.

“What’s going on?”

“Someone decided it would be interesting to go for a joy ride in someone else’s car, lost control and ended up in the ditch. We had to get the tractor to pull it out.”

Pierrot is the immediate neighbour on the other side of the courtyard.

Pierrot has a tractor.

“We’ve left them to sort it out.”

The field where Juan Carlos and his beard live is not the sort of place where you would just wander past and stumble into a party, not unless you were on a serious cross country trek, so everyone knew everyone and had been invited.

Except.

Except that someone had invited Ocean, who had invited someone, who had invited someone who was passing by in the street who had a couple of friends.

From Paris!

Ah – ha!!!

There is nothing like having a good reason to be a bit more “humph – typical Parisians” to liven up a post party witch-hunt, unless it's a chance to blame Ocean for something else.

The one of the two present ‘fessed up, probably felt pretty embarrassed was given a right-royal republican admonishment and then it transpired that the other had run away.

Run away?

Where?!!

This IS the middle of nowhere and it’s a loooooongway to Paris.

He must be wandering, disorientated among the brambles.

Wanker!