Bobo Choses SS 2012*

Les Vacances de M.Leon

Monsieur Leon cycles around the campsite.
It’s part of the summer, just like the heat, the mosquitoes, and the afternoon siesta.
Monsieur Leon also has the habit of whistling contentedly. Indeed, he is so good at it
that the larks prefer to listen to him, and the roosters refuse to
greet the break of day because they cannot compete
with Monsieur Leon’s dawn whistling. He starts on a low note, like a timid violin
seeping in with the first sunbeams among the tents and the caravans,
among the pine branches and the dew that the night drops before retiring…
Bit by bit, Monsieur Leon’s whistling warms up and changes colour,
enhanced by new notes of the voices of children just awakened from slumber.
So begin the long happy summer days at the campsite,
and so they go on, with no clocks to mark the hours passing by.

When night falls once more, and Monsieur Leon thinks
that everybody has gone to bed,
he takes out his ukulele and there, on the steps of his caravan,
plays songs that he learned from his grandmother, songs that are
as old as this old world of ours. Or even older.
And then all around him, in time with his beat,
the crickets crick and the owls owl, and together they play
the lullaby that sends us off to sleep
and into a land of dreams as sweet
as the salt of the sea in summertime,
as the tickling of the grass under our bare feet…

Tale by Felipe Cano