Girl guides get wild
Mesdames celebrating Bastille Day
Monday, July 14th is Bastille Day in France, the anniversary of the day the French Revolution really got underway, when they dumped the monarchy. Every little town had some kind of fete yesterday and we attended the one nearby in tiny XXX, which started in the blazing afternoon sun with a petanque tournament. We didn't realize when we went with K and K that we'd end up playing in this tournament - we thought we were there to watch - but what the heck, we said, pourquoi pas? Walt and I played first against the two teenage boys, Thomas and Charles, and we took an early lead of 6 to 3. Then our concentration faltered and they went on to win 13 - 7, although we made them fight for every point and we had quite a few really excellent shots. Our second opponents were Michel and Michel, older gentlemen; we gave them a run for their money but I ended up being their best player a couple of times, when in trying to knock out one of their balls out I actually bumped it closer to the cochonet. But again, it wasn't a complete rout, with a final score of 13 - 6. Our final match was against K and K, and we beat them 13 - 1, a humiliating defeat for the English, tongue in cheek.
The petanque tournament was accompanied by what had to have been a CD of New Wave Hits of the 80s - which in the movie of my life is THE soundtrack of my college years. Can you remember Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark singing Electricity? Or Video Killed the Radio Star? If you can, try to imagine it blasting out a speaker while a bunch of old French guys play petanque in the shadow of a Romanesque church while their wives hustle around organizing the food and a bunch of girl guides in uniform play tennis nearby. That's Bastille Day afternoon in France.
The other thing we didn't realize when we started playing the tournament was that the losers get treated to a drink by the winners, taking the sting out of defeat, for sure.
We hadn't originally planned to stay for the community dinner either but we were all having such a nice time, the weather was so lovely in the shade, and everyone was so friendly that we joined the crowd for the meal of carrot slaw, celery root slaw, grilled steak (local beef) and frites (french fries), bread, cheese, and fruit tart for dessert. It was during the meal, after our hunger was satisfied but before the cheese and dessert had been served, that we began to see the silly side of the French come out, a really amazing capacity to have good honest fun shared by young and old alike. The small crowd was enlivened by the presence of a visiting troupe of girl guides, all dressed in their khaki shorts and blue camp shirts. As Walt said, it is impossible to be pessimistic about the future when you're in the presence of a group of adolescent girls. First they started grooving a bit to a particularly good song that they all liked, and the next thing we knew they were on their feet, waving handkerchiefs in the air, joined by most of the citizens of XXX - I think it was a favorite French song although I don't know if it was patriotic or not. A few songs later a conga line was formed, and then a human tunnel. Then everyone kept dancing, old people, kids, teenagers, girl guides, French, English, Americans.
Finally, it came time for the fireworks, a small but well-organized and crowd pleasing display that lasted about 5 minutes. Fireworks are fabulous when you've been fed well, danced to the Village People, had a few glasses of rose', and spent the afternoon concentrating on nothing more and nothing less than getting a heavy metal ball as close to a little wooden ball as possible. Reed and I covered our ears and he was quite tickled to see them, old enough, perhaps, for the first time, to really appreciate the spectacle. We got home at 11:30 pm and fell into bed, partied out.
