Best of 2009: The Midnight Garden

During my spring stopover in France, I spent about 36 hours in Narbonne visiting a friend and his two sons while the missus was out of town, and did nothing untoward, by the way, unless you count suggesting the boys wear buttons that say I Heart my New Mom. Just after I turned out the light, my friend knocked on the guest room door and ushered me down to the garden. “I heard something outside,” he said. “Whatever it was went into the bushes and I couldn’t rustle it out, so I stuck in my hand.”

Now see, this here is your proof of the nothing untoward. Genius STUCK HIS HAND IN THE BUSHES. He stuck his hand in the bushes BECAUSE he didn’t know what was there. Would I, with such a man?

And then: “I felt something prickly. So, I grabbed a towel from the laundry room to throw over it and dragged it into the light.”

Seriously, there is not one reasonable statement in that whole story.

The towel was lying on the ground over a small mound. About the size of a large, headless rat. He lifted the corner to reveal a hedgehog, curled up tight, playing dead. We could just make out its adorable little scrunched-up storybook face. And that, well, that was worth getting up for.

On an unrelated note, shaved truffles and mascarpone encased in brie and served on a baguette with a side of eggs will not in fact stop your heart. Not for dangerously long anyway. Fortunately, Genius served this for breakfast AFTER the hedgehog story, because I might with such a man. Yessir, I might.

France, meet Africa. Africa, meet France.