Ten days ago was Bastille Day. The epitome of
l'esprit Français, when the bold, courageous citizenry, yearning for liberty and equality threw down the yoke of their royalist oppressors and stormed their hated symbol of injustice. Apparently though, according to a recent article I read on the BBC, the majority of French forget that the 14th July celebrations are not to commemorate its bloody ancestor of 1789 but the more joyous occasion of the Fête de la Federation in 1790. Here royalists mingled, ate and paraded with their soon-to-be executioners and together, even marked the birth of the heir to the throne (meanwhile, on the other side of the channel in 2013....).
On 14th July 2013 l'esprit Français was still very much in evidence. The authorities made the centre of town about as impassable as French paperwork; the military tried to look chic;
Monsieur Le Président sat there doing nothing and no Parisians had bothered to show up. The crowds thronging the Champs Elysées for the
défile and clogging every Metro station that
le Police Nationale hadn't got to
yet,
were tourists. Les Françiliens themselves were either (as was I) ensconced in their
cantines, sipping a chilled
demi and grumbling about the state of...well...the state, or already on holiday - but apparently the fireworks were quite impressive though.
The point here is that, although your average
Blaise doesn't really give a purple mediterranean fruit about 'the big stuff', he'll rip your arm off for a ticket to a dingy warehouse to see a hundred over-exposed, blurry pictures of the inside of someone's mouth. As for getting him to reveal the whereabouts of his favourite little brunch place, you'd be as likely to hear him utter the words "tall, skinny latté" without keeling over.
A week after the history, it was time for the nation's most revered sporting occasion as
Le Grande Boucle (better known as Le Tour De France) rolled into town in all it's yellow-jerseyed glory. From two o'clock the crowds were gathering in anticipation. Positions were staked out all along Rivoli, Tuileries and Elysées and fiercely guarded by flag-waving, 10 Euro-a-pint-beer-swilling, doing-my-best-impression-of-a-roasting-lobster cycling fans eager to embrace this quintessentially Gallic sporting spectacle.
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| Come on Lance I think you over-did it this time. |
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| Philippe shows the world his Art and Crafts project |
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| When I said I was tired of being on duty... |
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| A pretty girl with a water canon, enough said! |
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| No, it's "Baguette" |
It was mightily impressive; the pre-show
caravanne was suitably silly, big and loud. The fun included a man in a hot air balloon on wheels advertising camping gas; a rolling pile of breadsticks (no free guesses on this one!) and (the most popular by far) mineral water being sprayed out of those pressurised tubs you use for weed killer.
Once that was past the tension rose almost as high as the temperatures until (almost two hours later) when the escorting police vehicles finally rounded the corner of the Tuilerie Gardens and the shining black train of the Team Sky riders was finally sighted, the thrill was as palpable as the wind created by the
peloton as it sped by in a lycra and carbon fibre blur.
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| There's a British winner in there somewhere |
Back to the flags though. Among them I saw Norwegian, Croatian, Australian, Italian, Columbian (their rider Quintana came in second), somewhat controversially a Texan and of course a multitude of Union Flags supporting deserved winner Chris Froome. The Tricolor, however, was notably absent (aside from the one painted across the sky by the aerial display team).
Here's the thing you see, the French have come nowhere near having their own winner of their signature sporting event in decades, so they've resigned themselves to their other national sport, the aforementioned grumbling, at which they are European, world and Olympic Champions. Any French person I spoke to about Froome's domination of this year's event huffed disconsolately and said "B'off! He was very impressive, but he was probably doping."
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| The only Tricolor on display |
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| Some people will do anything for a view |
Many of you, I'm sure, would put this suspicion down to the poisoned words of a certain acrimonious American, but I think there was something else behind them. There's something of a superiority complex about the French. A nation that gave the world Napoleon, de Gaule, D'Artagnan, The Man in the Iron Mask, even Asterix; unbendable heroes, invincible (to a point), doesn't really like losing...well...anything really, especially on home turf. I mean, the people who set up
L'Académie Française to protect the glorious
langue matérnelle from
heinous foreign languages were certainly not going to stand for a bunch of
anglos coming over and winning Le Tour DE FRANCE,
c'est n'importe quoi!
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...no, it's not this one
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After hearing these gripes a few times, I began to feel some sympathy. Well, can you imagine: the Aussies coming over and beating us at Lords - anyone else apart from a Brit winning Wimbledon? No, neither can I!
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Spot the nation of sporting excellence....
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