Les jolies colonies de vacances [English translation]

The pretty vacation camps

by Pierre Perret

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{Chorus}

The pretty vacation camps

Thanks mom, thanks dad

Every year, I'd wish to do it again

You kaïdi aïdi aïda1.

I write to you a little blurb

So you don't worry too much

Here we are treated with the greatest of care2

I'm only eight but I manage

I cough a bit 'cause we swallow

The smoke of the factory nearby

But it is across the street we're playing

In the city landfill.

{To chorus}

To peck at our food we are put at ease

It's really like home

Baked beans are real concrete

I got the stomach like a cliff

In the morning we do the dumpsters

The supervisors are not mean

They snore most of the time

Since they are drunk as skunks3.

{To chorus}

Yesterday, I slipped from atop a chair

While pissing in the sink

I got my chin like a bike handlebar

And three canines in the Pere Lachaise cemetery4

Punishments are quite harsh

The monitor is quite a card

He ties us up in the glaring sun

Naked and smeared with jam

{To chorus}

To have a swim it's a quiet spot

We are alone nobody goes there

We dip into a small cove

Where the city sewer flows

Heard that we all have typhus fever

We all have the chubby full of zits

And at night before going to bed

We count who's got the most

{To chorus}

I send you dear father and mother

My most distinguished kisses

I must leave you for I'm seeing my fiancée

An old crone going on her ten years

The little ones are unlucky

We never get to travel

But the grown up girls go to Tangiers5

In the other vacation camps.

{To chorus}

1. Boy scout anthem.2. Literally "we are cooked with little onions".3. Literally "round like shovel handles".4. The celebrity cemetary in Paris.5. A veiled historical reference to the forced prostitution of the white women enslaved in the oriental harems.