18 - To Sebastian - June 2011

Dear Sebastian,  

Do you remember when you were in the workshop with Papa watching him paint all those big pictures?

One day a truck came to Papa and Jojo’s house to take the paintings to France.

You said to the driver of the truck “Don’t take them to France please, take them to my house.”

But he had to take them to the airport and he put them on an aeroplane which took them to France.

In France, Papa took them to a special kind of shop which sells paintings.  It is called an Art Gallery and there were some lovely pieces of sculpture there too which Papa and Jojo’s friend Dume had made.

One night we had a very big party at the Art Gallery, and we had pizza and cheese to eat, and special red drinks too.

Everyone wore pretty party clothes.

At the party, someone liked the picture Papa had painted of you when you were three.

They bought it from the Gallery, and took it home to their house.   Now it is on a wall in a house in France.

Every day, when the people in that house sit down to have tea, they see a painting of you when you were three.  Isn’t that wonderful?

Give yourself a big hug from us, and blow bubbles on Elliott’s tummy!

Love Papa and Jojo

17 - To Sebastian - June 2011

Dear Sebastian,  

Mummy sent us a photo of you watching us when we were on Television.   

You were watching on the computer, but in a country called Germany, we were on Television in everyone’s houses.

We tried to wave to you but we don’t think they showed that bit of the video.

Did you see Jojo buying bread?  She said “Bonjour” to the nice man in the shop.

The bread is the special bread from France called a baguette.  It is very long and thin, even longer than you were when you were three.

It was good fun making the TV show, but there were a lot of people with us.   

There was a nice lady called Barbara, who was a reporter and asked us lots of questions.

There was a man with a camera, and another one with a special black box which recorded all the sounds.

It was very crowded on Joyeux with everybody inside, so sometimes the camera man sat outside and took lots of nice photos of the scenery as we went past.   

Everyone had great fun and Jojo made a quiche from some eggs while we went along.

Sometimes, when the camera man wanted to take photos, everyone except Jojo and Papa had to hide so they couldn’t be seen.   Can you see the sound man hiding at the back of Joyeux?

We had a lovely time for two whole days, and it was so quiet and after the television people went away.

Give yourself a big hug from us, and blow bubbles on Elliott’s tummy!

Love Papa and Jojo

16 - To Sebastian - June 2011

Dear Sebastian,  

Today when we were in our boat, we came to a big mountain.

“Oh No!  How will we get round this?” we wondered.

When we got very close to it, we found there was a tunnel.   

So we went very very slowly up to the door and we looked in.

It was very very dark, and very very long.   It was nearly as far to the other end as it is to get to Auntie Abbie’s place.

We could see the mountain at the other end which was so far away that it looked just like a tiny little green door.  There were yellow lights too, and when they reflected in the water it looked as though there were lots of them, but they weren’t very bright, so it looked very dark and scary.

Inside the tunnel was a funny blue tugboat that had a bright light and used a chain to pull it along.     It was very noisy, but it showed us the way to the other end.

It took more than  an hour to get to the other end of the tunnel.  That’s even longer than it takes you to eat your tea.

When we got to the other side we had been in the dark for so long that everything looked really really bright.   We had to blink five times and put our sunglasses on for a little while.

Give yourself a big hug from us, and blow bubbles on Elliott’s tummy!

Love Papa and Jojo