Bastille Celebration

Being July 14th in France meant it was Bastille Day and a public holiday. Jim booked us a table at The Commerce, one of the restaurants in the square in the local village Bagnols (Banyols). A stage was set up for a band and recorded Cuban music was playing as we took our seats at the table. Looking around I could see all restaurants
in the square were going to the busy as tables were filling up fast. Although the huge plane trees kept off the late sun it was still very hot and very humid. When Leo and Ben saw the other children on the dance floor they joined in too - Leo running, jumping and then posing like John Travolta and Ben just sort of flopping to the rhythm, which Sarah declared to the same way Hamish dances.

We all ordered the Plat de Jour which was a 3 course meal for E17 which was very good value. Our waiter wanted to know where we were from and how we had found his village, as he was not used to serving overseas tourists. The crowd appeared to be all from the village with maybe some French tourists. The first course was a Spanish tart (ratatouille with chorizo) second course was lamb shanks with honey sauce which sounded a bit weird but was lovely, and lastly was Crème Brulee which was excellent. Leo wolfed down a 12” pizza all by himself.

During our main course an aging rocker grabbed the microphone and started to sing. He wore black trousers, a black satin shirt with 3-4 buttons undone, and a gold chain. Some of his songs were pure rock and others were straight from Charles Aznevour. He had the music pre-recorded but it was obviously his voice because he missed a few important notes. But it didn’t matter because the atmosphere was so good. We were all rocking along to the beat and children and mothers or fathers with babies were on the floor keeping time to the music. Everybody joined in from babies to 90 year olds. And then they all stood and raucously sang the national anthem, to which we joined in. A couple of other chaps sang, one who was all in white and did Rod Stewart numbers and then the main attraction was the Tom Jones look-alike in black trousers and black velvet jacket complete with sequins. He sang quite well and we were having fun trying to guess which song it was because nearly all his numbers were English songs but sung in French. Even Abba can be hard to recognize in French. All the adults were now dancing and the Barry and I joined in. For Barry to get up and dance these days means it really has to be good music. There was jive, twist, rock and roll, tango, cha cha, and a French version of our Nutbush. All in all it was a wonderful evening and we felt very special to be enjoying a genuine French village celebration. For such a small village as Bagnols it was quite a party, and we have seen nothing like it in Australia. Admittedly they have a band in Federation Square on New Years Eve in Melbourne, but the atmosphere doesn’t compare. It would have to be something like McCrae turning on a party, but without the village square with its restaurants all bunched together they can’t do it. It requires everyone working together in spite of being competitive with each other. Uniquely French.