Bastille Day

Bastille Day

This 14^th of July was, for me, a particularly enjoyable occasion. There are evenings that I have experienced before in the village, at the Feu de la St Jean for instance, when the villagers collectively appear at their best. At the funeral of Diana (Princess of Wales) her brother asked rhetorically of her two sons “who will make your spirit sing?”. That phrase has always had a resonance with me, encapsulating the feeling one can get occasionally that all is good with the world (despite whatever is making the news headlines at the time). Wordsworth expressed the feeling in Intimations of Immortality as ”we feel that we are greater than we know”. That is what I felt on the evening of this 14^th of July.

When I got to the Place Banche de Cour, in front of the Bar du Pont, I joined Daniel, Jacques, Claudine and Michelline at a table and then went looking for food. There were pizzas, burgers, sausages and chips on the menu (I opted eventually for a burger and chips). But.......I had a joke in mind. So I said to various people that I was disappointed that there was no “fromage de tete d'aristocrate” (aristocrat brawn) on the menu. This was met with blank stares; joke failed. So I attempted to explain that, since there were a lot of loose aristocratic heads around on the original 14^th of July the French, being French, must have made brawn out of them and that should be a traditional dish for the date. That explanation did extract some laughs; that is until Patrick, a serious and meticulous character, said that the original Bastille day preceded all the guillotining and so there wouldn't have been any spare heads to make brawn out of. There's always one, isn't there? He's a bridge and chess player of course.

Anyway..............I went on to have a thoroughly enjoyable evening. There was music, dancing, conversation and plenty to watch to keep me amused. At one point the band struck up with a song that I love, the first line of which runs “Il me semble que la misere serait moins penible au soleil”. Everyone was joining in singing it and I wanted to know who sang it and the title. Everybody knew the former: Charles Aznavour. But nobody knew the title of the song. So when I got home I did a Google search and found that the title was “Emmenez-moi” (au bout de la terre). The next time there is a similar gathering, probably at the moules-frites next Thursday, I shall go round asking people what the title is and score a few brownie points.

Conversation ranged from boules to education in Tunisia, Islam, power, the colour black and quantum physics, which kept me nicely occupied, and whilst drinks were flowing more than freely nobody got very drunk or obstreperous in any way. And the moppets were in full swing, dancing with other moppets, parents or dogs; it didn't seem to matter.

The “black” mentioned above came about because of a news item I had read earlier in the day stating that a group of British scientists had managed to produce a colour black that absorbed 99.32% of light. The colour black, as most of us know, absorbs light and sight depends on reflected light. So if you can produce a black that is black enough (reflects no light) you won't actually be able to see it; and as you get closer to that goal, as this invention does, you get some intriguing side-effects. Fascinating, isn't it?