The Man In The Woods (Magical Thinking Part 2)

The plot thickens.  I ask Marie-Thérèse in the épicerie about the man in the woods.  She feigns ignorance which is puzzling or perhaps she really doesn’t know, the hours that woman keeps do not leave her with a lot of leisure time to go gallavanting about the woods looking at pretty art, as Mr. Jules pointed out. 

Tonight I had to go and pick up the munchkins’ new 06 passports from the Commune.  You can’t smile in passport photos nowadays and for the new Biometric ones I had to schlep them all the way to Lausanne to get the photo done with a posh machine.  After an hour’s wait we all traipse in AND of course, tell my lot they can’t  smile and they get what the French call a fou-rire which irritates the lady operating the machine who has been doing this all day and they are backed up to standing room only in the waiting area AND so she threatens to send them out of the room and I get cross as I do not want to have to come back and navigate the confusing layout of the Lausanne streets again AND as a result they tried so hard not to laugh they look pitiful, so miserable and depleted (the corners of Sophie-G’s, mouth actually turn down) that I wonder if I will be interviewed by the social services once again like the time Sophie fell off the changing mat and a liquidy bubble appeared on the side of her head  three weeks later AND being unable to explain how it came into being at the Emergency Services, (three weeks is a long time when you are sleep deprived) I had a very nice cup of coffee with a lady from the Social Services AND … a chat.

Anyway back to the Commune.  Mme Clot, my favourite, is on duty and so I nonchalantly enquire about the man living in the woods.  When I say, nonchalantly, I am exaggerating a bit because as anyone knows who speaks another language, sarcasm, irony, wit, nonchalance and all those things that make your speech part of your personality fly out of the window.  I fear I came across as just vague and possibly dimwitted. 

“Dans la cabine?”  She asked. (the one in the cabin?)

“OUI!”  I say enthusiastically. But I over do it, way over do it , she smells a rat and back tracks.

“There used to be but not anymore…I don’t think”.

I have a feeling that something is going on here.  Something is being covered up.

Who can it be? 

Perhaps it is Phil Collins.  He is supposed to live around here somewhere and come to think of it when I saw him in the corridors at the Clinique a few weeks back he did look badly in need of a shave.