Bastille Day and a Fainting Fit
Yesterday was Bastille Day in France. Perhaps a little like bonfire night in the UK, Bastille day is celebrated with fireworks, more or less in every town and village.
Even our own little town - about 2,500 people, including those from surrounding hamlets and farms - manages to have quite a good display in the rugby stadium, and completely free, although I can’t imagine how ‘we’ pay for it. Perhaps there is a European subsidy to make sure every community has enough money to afford one. Ha ha that would cheer me up to think that people in the rest of Europe are paying for it, I’ll have to investigate. The evening starts, of course, well before the firework display. Our village is lucky enough to have an intact medieval market hall in the village square which is the perfect venue for town parties, bodegas, fetes, brocantes and, errmm, markets. So on every occasion possible, a band is rustled up from somewhere - a singer and at least accordionists is the bare minimum - and people flock together for a good dance.
The French seem to all know how to dance ‘properly’, in the ‘old-fashioned’ way, and enjoy nothing better than an evening of public waltzing. My own dancing talents are poor by comparison - well, just plain poor really, ‘by comparison’ or not - so I prefer to sit at the cafe with a beer and watch everyone else. Of course, my pre-teenagers shuffle around with their mates complaining that a disco would be better, but you can’t please everyone all the time.
Anyway, it’s all very French, very relaxed, and good fun, and everyone is happy. So much so, that a lot of people got so carried away dancing that they forgot the firework display altogether. If you do find yourself in France on Bastille Day, be sure and get yourself to the local event. As always, there was no sign of trouble at all, despite the mix of alcohol and young people which go together so badly in lots of other countries.
The other side to living in a small community was apparent earler in the day. Because one of my daughters is class-delegate at her school, she was called upon to attend a couple of memorial services, for French killed during the war. Mrs B and my other daughter went along as well, for a bit of solidarity and because a ten year old can’t drive herself, even in France on a moped.
It was a very hot day, and not surprisingly the maires, adjuncts, officials and others all liked to say their bit, making it quite a lengthy affair. A bit too lengthy perhaps, because one of my daughters fell over in a faint during the service, to the surprise of the elderly gentlemen that she fell on. She was dragged over to a nearby mound - cow manure as it turned out, but I digress - to sit and recover. All over in five minutes, and cured by a slap in the face and a glass of water.
Point is, Mrs B went into the market this morning, and complete strangers were rushing over to ask how poor sick daughter was bearing up. Her brief fainting spell at the memorial service was apparently the hot topic of the morning, and the entire village wanted to hear the latest news. Although when I say ‘complete strangers’ that really means ‘complete strangers to us’ because somehow our daughter knows, and is friends with, the entire community. It can take a good hour just buying the newspaper with her as she greets and kisses everyone she meets. She is an outgoing type of girl…anyway, she is fine, fainting is just another little thing she inherited from me (I used to regularly faint in school assemblies) that she will probably never thank me for.
While I am digressing - I learned that she had misunderstood the expression ’smelling salts’ (as seen on Pride and Prejudice for example, a favourite video with the ladies of this household) and thought that it was ’smelly socks’ that were used to revitalise a swooning lady. Now there’s an idea.
