Saturday

Happy Bastille day



I know I know I have been away for ages.... and then here I show up with a post about Bastille day(?), or should I say le quatorze Juillet(the 14 of July) as they say around here. It's essentially Frances national holiday celebrating the storming of the Bastille, the end of feudalism and the proclamation of the rights of man and of the citizen. And so how does one go about celebrating such a revolution you ask, well around here (it's worth a blog post a little late) they have used such creativity and complete disregard for personal safety to come up with a brilliant idea. 
A large tree trunk in loaded onto the back of a dump truck, the truck is parked as close to the canal (du midi) as possible and it's back end is raised putting the tree at a steep incline over the canal, there are flags nailed to the far end of the tree trunk and to add just the perfect touch the tree is soaped down with inches of slippery soap.....yes you guessed it, lines of adolescent and (a few not so adolescent) boys (and two brave girls) competed for glory (and a hundred euros) by trying to climb to the end of the log and capture a flag before falling into the canal. So in honour of the brave french who so long ago fought such a revolution of freedom, we watched the boys and a few grown men and two girls fall one after an other off of a slippery soapy log into the polluted waters of the canal du midi.
Who needs the olympics?    

No comments: