worryingly jolly batman

At the moment in French we're studying le Petit Prince or The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery. This is a wonderful, slim little book, available in french and English (and probably half a dozen other languages), and while on the surface it's quite simple it also has a number of sophisticated second levels and themes.

Friendship and loneliness are big themes. Especially in Chapter XXI, which describes the petit prince's encounter with le renard, a fox. And it's been a while since I've really thanked my friends, on the Net or IRL... so... Instead of saying it myself, using the same old cheesy words tripping over each other in the same old soppy way, i'm going to let Antoine De Saint Exupery do it for me in french, and translate it myself into english.  Since some of it won't make sense in english, I expect they'll be fairly free translations, as any French-speakers reading this will be bound to notice. :) Bold is St-Ex's own words in french, plain is my translations, and the stuff in italics or square brackets is my summary when I had to skip a bit. That is my very own tortured french... please excuse it. :) (Also, I'm sorry about les accents. I couldn't get them all, it would have taken hours... forgive that.)

( Unique au monde )
That's a helter-skelter, unfaithful translation and summary of my favourite chapter in this book. I like it because it says so much, so elegantly about the nature of friendships; so I use it to try to thank mine.

I really do love you all. You'd be surprised. There is nothing for me like my friends, on line, in real life, wherever. Thank you.