A new view to bark at... As we drove down through France over the weekend from Calais to our new temporary home just north of Cannes on the French Riviera, we were greeted by bands of protesting ‘gilet jaunes’ at varying points – usually roundabouts – along the way. As their initial grievance had apparently been about the increased tax on diesel fuel and we were in a diesel-powered Toyota campervan, I was happy to raise my fist in a solidarity kind of way when we first encountered them, to be greeted by smiles and regal bows, and despite the additional sarcastic shouts from some of them of ‘Vive Brexit!’ we felt at one with these people we would now be living among. However, from about midway down, our feelings of unity were somewhat tempered by the long queues we began to find at the gilet-jaune-controlled roundabouts, and soon we were cursing the very sight of them as they told us we couldn’t take the turn-off we wanted to, or drunkenly accosted us, telling us to wind down the window and then leering into the van at the sight of two females in a campervan. As a result, from 70km north of Lyon, we decided to switch from the much cheaper roundabout-strewn rural roads to the much more expensive, but roundabout-free and much quicker, toll roads for the remainder of our journey south. What a great decision that turned out to be, and how the gilet jaunes went up once more in our esteem when we came to the pay booth after the most expensive leg, from Lyon to Aix-en-Provence, to find it (in an initially heart-sinking moment) swarming with gilet jaunes, and consequently… FREE!!! Vive les gilet jaunes! Except, of course, when they’re drunk, leering and anything but politically motivated…
We are now just about settled into our lovely new abode, and from here on I plan to be writing about my attempts to discover whether there is any sort of live music scene I can break into here on the French Riviera. I’m confident there will be. Time will tell. Or, as the French might say (but I’m sure don’t, in the same way that they don’t say ‘la nuit est jeune’), le temps dira…
We are now just about settled into our lovely new abode, and from here on I plan to be writing about my attempts to discover whether there is any sort of live music scene I can break into here on the French Riviera. I’m confident there will be. Time will tell. Or, as the French might say (but I’m sure don’t, in the same way that they don’t say ‘la nuit est jeune’), le temps dira…
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