Jasper has learned to break down the language barrier in Quebec. During a tricky telephone conversation with a Francophone administrator at the government registrar’s office (we misfiled his declaration of birth and needed to provide further information, none of which is covered by year one French evening classes), Jasper shattered the stalemate.

He did this by breaking wind in such quantity, volume and duration that nobody who bore witness could mistake it for anything else – other than an elephant stamping on a half-empty squeezy ketchup bottle, which is pretty unlikely anywhere on Earth, but especially in Hudson.

The conversation broke down for several seconds while we all laughed – Carolina and I on this end of the phone and the administrator on the other. Which disproves the theory that the Anglos and Francos have nothing in common.

There’s nothing so funny as well-delivered toilet humour, and everybody gets the punchline. (The last laugh was on me: it was my turn to change the little man.)

To celebrate, we went out in search of fresh Quebec berries, which are pretty damned awesome right now. And because we were already out, and our work from home life more or less revolves around food, a visit to the supermarket was mandatory.

We decided to unshackle our son from the bonds of his car seat and test-drive our Baby Bjorn, which sounds like an IKEA coffee table, but is in fact a papoose-style over the shoulder baby carrier.

Talk about mesmerised! JD was more impressed with aisles of produce than he’s ever been with his acquarium bouncy chair. His head thrashed from side to side like Wimbledon spectators on Centre Court as he took in all the sights.

I hate to think what kind of impact the shops will have on him once he realises all those pretty coloured boxes contain fun things to buy… I know I’ve never recovered from that revelation. Sleep well.

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