A Job for "Elf and Safety" Friday 8th August

The bull railings for the relatively slim

So there we were last night, one moment standing at the bar, and the next moment standing behind a set of bars waiting to be run through by the horns of a big and extremely agitated black bull. Not your usual Friday night outing I grant you, but in this neck of the woods in August, it’s hard to go out anywhere on a Friday night and not have a bull involved.

August is Fete month and every little village and town puts on either a day, a weekend or a full blown week of dancing, drinking, bull running, more drinking, some more dancing and a lot more drinking.

We still had no phone connection, and we’d had an extremely frustrating afternoon which involved a fairly long drive down to Lattes where we had first bought our phone system. We tracked down the nice young lady in the agency and she smiled and shrugged her shoulders in a typically Gallic manner and said that sadly, although she had sold us all the bits and pieces, she was not in any way responsible for the provider of the actual phone connection. She did cheer us up slightly by sending France Telecom a brisk message telling them to get a move on with our connection, and then depressed us by telling saying that she had a friend who had exactly the same problem as us and she went for ages without a phone.

There was clearly nothing further that we could do, so we nipped into “Toys R Us” and bought a very snazzy car chair for our new grandson who is expected at the beginning of September. This was our only real success, because after this, we had a quick look at the map and thought that we were very close to the village of Maguellone, and with a bit of time to spare, a quiet early evening visit and maybe supper would have been nice. It wasn’t nice at all because it turned out that we were on totally the wrong road and were nowhere near to it, so we turned around and headed back to St Jean du Moulin feeling somewhat disgruntled.

An evening out was what was needed, so having downed a pizza at home rather than risk having to eat any part of a bull on a barbeque, we drove to the edge of Castries and nabbed the first parking spot we came to. This turned out to be a wise move since it then required us to walk into the old part of town. Usually we only see Castries from the main road that passes straight through it, and we found ourselves in a maze of narrow alleyways running between the 18th Century houses, and walking under the arches of the old aqueduct that runs through the region.

We could hear all sorts of excitement and clapping as we drew closer to the central part of the town, but rounding a corner, we found our way blocked by tall gates made from vertical red iron bars set about a metre apart. At first I thought we would be stuck and unable to explore further, but then realised that the general public (providing they weren’t wildly overweight) were simply slipping between the bars and going about their business.

It was evident that the bars were there to stop something larger than a human being, and an hour later, having stood on a piece of wall and watched the general populace fill up on large plastic glasses of beer, whisky and coke, there was a lot of banging and cheering, and the crowd in the centre of the square suddenly disappeared between the nearest set of bars. The doors of a nearby lorry flew open and a large very annoyed black bull emerged. His horns were covered in leather sheathes but the rest of him was as nature intended and he was distinctly fed up with life in general, and with the general public in particular.

For the next ten minutes, the bull rampaged around the town centre, bellowing and snorting and making every effort to impale whichever young man got in his way. He had plenty of targets to choose from and there were a few occasions when I wondered if the intake of whisky would win out over the speed at which the young man would clamber up the nearest lamp post or shin up the closest drainpipe. I watched in amazement as a handsome young man kissed two particularly attractive girls and then spun round and offered himself to the bull, only just managing to avoid the beast, before returning to kiss the girls once more. This could only be the Languedoc Roussillon, home of the troubadour and the razateurs.

After about ten minutes, the bull lost interest and had the wit to return to the truck from which he had descended, and if the organisers felt that he was running low on energy and anger, they would allow him to re-enter the truck, whereupon he would be replaced with a fresh bull. This went on for an hour but after that, we had just about had our fill of “Toro Toro” and people risking life and limb to tease the bull. Nobody got hurt, least of all the bulls, but we decided that a quiet walk back through the lamplit streets was the best way to go, and we just hoped that none of the bulls had escaped captivity and would confront us in an alleyway which was “sans drainpipes”.

The party must have gone on long into the night and we were awoken at about 5am on Saturday morning by the sounds of a group of young lads singing their way noisily up the road. They had obviously walked all the way from Castries, and judging by the noise, they were definitely the worse for wear. Bearing in mind that it must be about 10 kms to town, it’s a fair walk when you are sober, but probably nearly twice as far for them, as a straight line was certainly out of the question. Jean told me that while he was in France doing his initial training and his military service, he thought nothing of walking miles to a village where a fete was being held. Walking TO a party always seems fun, but it’s the getting back home which is often harder than anticipated, although being slightly anaesthetised does help.