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I
am a retired maths teacher and have lived here for 12 years. Meze
is a fishing town, specializing in shellfish and is in the centre
of a large winegrowing area.
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| France
is well known for its wine |
May
is a month of fetes here in "the Midi". Mayday brought the first
outing of the totemic animal which every village has and ours is
"le Boeuf", a massive bull, its canvas and wooden frame carried
by eight men, the one at the front pulling a string which makes
the wooden jaws snap open and shut.
It headed a procession which lasted for hours - there were several
bands, decorated floats and many performing groups. The procession
stopped every 50 metres whilst each group performed to the crowds
at that point.
Amongst them were tiny tots miming to Britney Spears, 40 teenage
girls dressed as Michael Jackson singing 'Bad', an over-80s ballroom
dancing group in full evening dress, 70 young men of the water-jousting
club singing and dancing to a pre-war dance tune and a group of
young men singing a drinking song.
Since the choreography was fairly intricate, I assume the milky
liquid in the bottle each carried was not really Ricard!
So much effort had gone into making the costumes and rehearsing
the routines. Since half the population are busy fishermen and the
other half are winegrowers, one can only marvel.
And, believe it or not, on VE day, 8th May, they do it all again!
I couldn't help thinking that you would be hard pressed to find
70 young men to dress up and sing and dance through the streets
of an English town.
This sheer exhuberence is one of the things I love best about living
here, plus of course the climate, the food, the wine......
Best wishes,
Hazel
(Incidentally, Hazel is the mother of our very own other ex-pat
writer, Simon from Belgium.)
Hazel's
next diary entry
Are
you an ex-pat living abroad like Nicola or Simon or Hazel? Would
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