Sore bums near the Mediterranean sea

My daughter, at this very moment cycling along the canal that joins Atlantic Ocean to Mediterranean Sea – and probably suffering from a sore bum – had her mobile phone turned on for the first time in the last 48 hours that I had been trying to contact her.

Or anyone on the canal in fact.

When they left as a motley group of adults and children I was given five mobile phone numbers should I need to contact them, which I did because all the plans for registration at new schools next year had dissolved into a French chaos.

Did anybody have his or her phone turned on?

Well one of the adults had, but then left the phone with one of the children who was, for some reason alone and had no idea where the others were.

It was the others that I needed.

Have you too noticed how the ability to get in contact with someone decreases exponentially with the number of mobile devices they possess?

My son, who apparently needs to change his mobile phone for a new one every month, has the most annoying answer-phone message ever created – it’s all you will ever hear as he never, never answers.

My wife just doesn’t turn hers on, I think she thinks it will do so automatically and the neighbour – who is also on one of the bikes – usually leaves it on the kitchen table, maybe thinking that mobile means that it will make its own way.

So when Minnie answered after two days I was pretty surprised.

“Wow, hi, Minnie?”
“Yes”
“It’s me, dad.”
“Yes”

I was paying for this.

“How are you getting on?”

“Wow I went so fast I left them all behind I’m waiting for them to catch up there’s a person selling melons I’m really lucky like you know Simon and Simon in Canada and how things lucky always happen to him last night we heard this music and thought it was a funfair so went to look at it and it was a disco and the woman said it was free and it was just me and Remy and they had this thing that you had to be the same size as because it was a Soiree Mousse and we went in and there was a DJ and he said this one is for all the people who have finished their exams like we have and then the mousse came and I was in my flip flops and I slipped under and I had to jump up to breathe and I lost my flip flop and it’s going to be at Narbonne next, which is where exactly we are going……”

Breathe…..

“The Soiree Mousse not the flip flop, I’ve got some other shoes.”

Best phone conversation I’ve had in years.