Festivals And Jokes

Fête Votive
Last weekend was the Fête Votive in Mollans, which is probably best translated as the annual village fair. However, it doesn't correspond very well to the English version. True there are a couple of stands of games for kids, hooking plastic ducks or shooting ballons, but there's no cake stall, no cream teas and no vegetable/flower show. Instead there are boules competitions, contested by all comers and many do come from neighbouring villages and towns, and three evenings of music and dancing. The bands weren't up to much but that didn't seem to spoil anyone's enjoyment.

The Fête Votive more or less marks the end of the festival “season” in the village, which begins with Feu de la St Jean on the 23rd June. There is another small festival, the festival of the Rue des Granges, which this year is devoted to the theme of music, but that is quite a small event even by village standards. Of course, there are major arts festivals ongoing in Vaison and Avignon but they don't count as village life.

French And Territory
I was struck once again by a difference between village life here and in England when an unknown (to me) girl turned up at boules the other day. She appeared to be known to Kevyn, Daniel's son, but was certainly not one of his usual retinue of girlfriends. Daniel explained the connection, which was more or less as follows. Daniel had met the girl somewhere and, on hearing her surname, mentioned that he had known soneone of the same name when he was young. This girl turned out to be the grandaughter of Daniel's old friend, whom Daniel hadn't seen since his youth. The old friend was now living in nearby Malaucene.

People here seem much more often to retain connections with their early stamping grounds than I have found to be the case in England. Why? I believe that land ownership could explain it. How often in Enland do we find people who own small plots of land around places where they grew up. Very seldom, I think. In England, I very rarely met anyone who owned any land: a large house and garden perhaps, perhaps even several houses, but not small plots of land. French inheritance law tends to keep land in the family and, unless the land is obviously commercially very valuable, in the family it tends to stay. There is a lot more land in France than in England (which also makes it de facto less likely to be commercially valuable) and if you have a plot or plots of land you naturally tend to retain a connection with that place. That is my explanation, until I get a better one.

Joke
Pizza evenings tend to mean jokes. A bartender in a small village who had exceedingly strong hands used to squeeze lemons and nobody in the village had ever managed to extract another drop of juice from a lemon after he had squeezed it. So he put up a notice in the bar for the benefit over anyone passing through offering a 100 euro prize for a 5 euro stake if anyone could get more juice out of lemon after he had squeezed it. Over the following months several strong men tried but none
succeeded. Then, one day, a rather weedy, besuited individual came into the bar, saw the notice and asked to take up the challenege, much to the amusement of the others in the bar. At first, the barman was reluctant to take the man's five euros. However, the newcomer persisted so in the end the barman took a lemon and, to knowing smiles all round, squeezed the lemon apparently dry. The newcomer then took the squeezed lemon, squeezed hard himself and managed to extract not one but several more drops of juice. Everyone in the bar was astonished; after all, how could such a weedy individual extract more juice than the barman? The newcomer was asked what he did in life to enable him to carry out such a feat? . He replied, “I am a tax inspector”.