All the fun of the fête
NIGEL HEATH has just returned from France’s biggest summer festival and a World Cup win is not all they have to celebrate
ONE of the first signs that Féte Nationale is fast approaching is the little white numbers that suddenly appear on the edge of the pavements in Lassay les Chateaux.
It’s a village in the Pays De La Loire region of Northern France – and it punches above its weight.
This massive summer festival is held to celebrate Bastille Day, which became a national holiday in 1790, and marks the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille and the end of the French Revolution.
It’s a big party, with firework displays all over the country, the most spectacular of which is at the Eiffel Tower in the heart of Paris. There’s another fantastic show in Marseille where 10,000 rockets explode over the port against the backdrop of the Mediterranean Sea But back to those little white numbers.
They’re the allocated stall positions for a massive car boot-style sale when everyone in Lassay empties their attics of all their unwanted possessions, old tools, kids’ toys and clothes, china, bric-a-brac and much more, all displayed on trestle tables in front of their homes.
“All will be in full swing before 7.30am”, a friend told my wife Jenny and I, while we were enjoying a July 13 pre-fete evening beer in the square a few steps from our home on our first visit to this Petite Cité De Caractère, for the famous celebrations.
That’s an official designation given to towns and villages with outstanding architecture and heritage.
I thought he was pulling our leg about the early start but bargain hunter Jenny was up and out of the house just after 7am while I lazed smug in bed, in confident expectation of her red-faced return. But minutes passed and there was neither sight nor sound of her.
Now it was I who was missing out, so I hurriedly dressed and headed out into the square where, sure enough, all was in full swing.
Even English friends who speak quite good French found it difficult to understand the native humour so evident when accompanied by gales of laughter during the various, what seemed to us to be quite zany, street performances staged all around the village on féte day.
Some research seemed to suggest that the French quite like sending one another up, while we selfeffacing Brits tend to make fun of ourselves – but here I’ll ‘cop out’ by saying this may or may not be so. You have to see it to believe it.
Last year’s entertainment, I was told, included a man wandering around the village with a cow on a lead, provoking much hilarity wherever he went.
Ah, the French ‘je ne sais quoi’ eh?
This year I was given advance notice of one thoughtprovoking piece of entertainment. Three young people approached as I was leaving our garden and asked me who owned the wall next door.
It was Lassay’s Mayor, I was able to explain to a young man, who luckily spoke good English. Why did they need to know? I asked him. Because they wanted permission to stick the white profile of a woman on it. What on earth for, I wondered? To my surprise, I later spotted other figures whitewashed onto various walls around Lassay. All was revealed on fete day when young actors strolled around the village performing a play about the women of occupied France who’d had their heads shaved after the liberation for fraternising with the enemy although, it appeared, many had been innocent.
This play, it transpired, was to throw light on a chapter in French history which had been largely kept in the dark. It seemed an odd choice for a day of celebrations.
We were out in the square well before eight on our hunt for treasures, and while I picked up a lovely old oil lamp, a large perfume jar and an earthenware jug, Jenny found some French clothes for her young grandchildren.
A highlight of the morning was an amazing unicyclist performing on a large trampoline while trying to swat an imaginary fly with a copy of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, the subject of that horrific terrorist attack in Paris in 2015.
Later, his choice of music switched to a stirring rendition of Land of Hope and Glory when he cycled around the ring saluting. It was possibly a light-hearted
send-up of we Brits. No matter, as it was a hugely enjoyable show during which I downed a large hot dog made by our neighbour, the village butcher.
American friends at the end of the street we were staying on are busy renovating Lassay’s rambling old hotel, a massive labour of love, so the fête committee asked if they would throw open their doors as a venue for a band ironically called The Grand Hotel – and they duly did.
Meanwhile, Blew Gras, the fête’s other band, suddenly found themselves without a fiddler, so an Indonesian named Giles stepped in at the last minute to play in the square on Friday night and several times in the picturesque rose garden on the Saturday.
We got chatting to him and learned that, after flying home for a holiday, he would be returning to audition for a school near Paris where he hoped to continue his classical education.
Fête day is always an opportunity to link up with friends and acquaintances, who are drawn to it from surrounding areas like bees to a honey pot – and this year was no exception.
But by four o’clock, and with crowds still promenading the sunny streets, I turned to Jenny.
“I’m all fêted out, why don’t we go home, open a bottle of white wine and chill out in our garden?” I asked.
So we did, taking our bargains with us. Not in time, however, to see Belgium beat England in the third place play-off.
I wondered, after all the exhausting energy and excitment of Bastille Day, what on earth would tomorrow bring?
There was the little matter of France playing Croatia in the World Cup Final to come.
It was going to be a late night in Lassay les Chateaux.