14th July....Bastille weekend celebrations!!

The 14th of July is probably the biggest day of the year in France as far as celebrations go, bigger than Christmas and New Year, celebrating or commemorating the start of the French Revolution, when 7 prisoners were freed from the Bastille in Paris.

This year in our village everything started on the 12^th of July. The village festival committee have been busy all year working on creating a two day extravaganza of eating, drinking, and dancing for the evenings, and during the day time there was a celebration of all things agricultural and mechanical from yesteryear.

There were demonstrations of harvesting wheat through the ages, from the time when wheat was harvested by hand to the latest in combine harvesters, and everything in between. We even had an old portable bakers oven from the 60's (it could have been earlier) to bake the bread. They have not worked out how to grind the grain into flour yet (but I'm sure they will) which would complete the process of ground to table and all done in one field, but otherwise they showed the whole process from beginning to end and they did a great job.

This was our second ‘Fete de Batages’ and it was every bit as good as the first, and since we are no longer strangers it was even more enjoyable. It is always interesting to see how different people celebrate, and it was good to be enjoying ourselves amongst friends, even though for the majority of the time I was struggling to understand what people were saying. It appears I have to go through this pain barrier when I learn a new language so maybe by next year I will be able to have a proper conversation.

It was also a weekend of firsts for Fleur, as she got a bit more freedom from her parents. We were not chasing after her every five minutes to find out where she was, though to be fair most of the time she was by our side any way. It was her first big party with adults, complete with a huge disco rig and dance floor, so once she got over her shyness you could not keep her off the dance floor.

More than 400 of us sat down on Saturday night to a 4 course meal of soup, ham, beans and salad, cheese and apple tart. Each course was interspersed with dancing, which started off with older style French music for the more senior diners, but as we progressed through the courses so, in each musical set the amount of more traditional music got less and the disco tracks increased, in quantity and volume. Once the desert had been consumed there was an exodus of the older members of the village seeking some peace and quiet, and, at it was past midnight, no doubt their beds as well. After the older folk made their exit there was a procession of mainly fathers carrying small sleeping children to their beds. We made it to 1:30, before it was our turn to take our, happy tired, but still awake little one to her bed, though I still had to carry her the length of the village, to get her home.

Sunday saw the procession of tractors around the village lead by 2 shire horses pulling a tradition hay wane, being a farming community it is only natural that the celebrate their past, and for those of us who are new comers it is very interesting, though the hour long presentation of the qualities and history of each of more than 40 tractors was rather too long, especially if you don’t understand the jokes. In one form or another this celebration was repeated all over France on what is the biggest party weekend of the year for the French.

Today is the 14^th July its self and I am back at Bordeaux airport to go to work while the French nation sleep off their collective hangovers. Though I did see a large group of dedicated athletes getting ready to ‘run’ the Jarnac 10K although I guessing at the 10K bit, its not the Jarnac marathon because that happens at the end of October or the beginning of November. It was good to see I was not the only one up early on a Bank Holiday.

One wierd foot note to the weekend was an advert I heard on the French radio station as I drove to the airport, in English for a shopping centre in Bordeaux which was going to be open on the bank holiday, what an enditement on the English way of life. The advert was then repeated in French so I guess they are starting to catch us up, heaven forbid....