Yes, ten days after our cousins across the river celebrate the day they finally broke free of our tyranny and could get on with the serious business of making really big pizzas and having the children that would one day result in Neil Patrick Harris (those are the only things I know of that America has thus far achieved) here in France it is Bastille Day.
Bastille Day celebrates the French revolution, when the hated symbol of the wealthy political class, the Bastille, was stormed and its many unfairly imprisoned inmates freed. Right?
Wrong, mon ami(e).
7 people were in the Bastille that day; four forgers, two lunatics, and only one deviant. There had been two, but the Marquis de Sade, the man for whom sadism is named (and therefore the indirect cause of the Fifty Shades... trilogy) had been transferred out ten days prior.
Still, it was a hated symbol of tyranny, and so this evening and tomorrow there is all the pomp and ceremony that is to be expected on such an occasion. Pooi Yee, the tiny driving force behind many of the social events that occupy me, has told us that we are all leaving tomorrow at 7am to get good seats for the all-day-parade.
Yeah, I know. I work all week and this is how I enjoy my weekend.
In any case, this evening was great - there was a fireworks display in the park just down the road, and that meant we all tramped along for much ooh-ing and aah-ing as things went bang and flash an awful lot.
I'll write more on that tomorrow, and may even include some photos, but for now my reveille is in t-minus 5 hours so I'm going to hit the hay.
Happy Bastille Day! Remember that revolutions are so named because they revolve; give it a few years and it'll all look the same.
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