Le Franco Phoney

It’s been a few years since I mentioned the Fete du Reblochon, but watching the parade the other day made me realise it’s time to bring it up again. Where else in the world would you be ‘chased’ by a stuffed wild boar on wheels, led by a man dressed as a country bumkpin?

The boar was projectiled towards the crowd that had gathered for the parade and the man directing it seemed pretty happy with his job. Other highlights of the parade were the kids throwing hay and some sort of seeds that stung as they hit bare skin, and the men carrying an enormous amount of hay on their heads (like massive grass affros), the deafening bell ringers and best of all, the free samples of Reblochon cheese. The Fete du Reblochon is a really enjoyable day offering all sorts of rural entertainment. It swaps the Ferris wheel for a donkey race, the target shooting for wood chopping, hot dogs for local diot sausages, the man selling that amazing kitchen chopping device that peels, grates, chops, dices and more for the woman explaining how cheese is made, and the showbags of sweets for bags of cheese. It’s a great day out.

Now, back to the boar. Spain might have the running of the bulls and Rio might have Carnival, but La Clusaz is possibly the only place in the world that has the stuffed boar on wheels. And at least one person (the guy pulling the boar) thinks that’s a win.

Ever wanted to turn your old camper into a cow? Someone in Le Grand Bornand can help you. Although the eyes suggest the cow has been on the whacky tobaccy, the rest is in order, with a decent set of horns, four legs, an udder, a lovely tail hanging out the back, and a lovely big mouth and tongue chewing some hay. There’s even a tag on the ear.

The cow van has been on the hill up from Thônes to advertise last weekend’s Fête de l’Alpage (cow fields fete), which, as you can see from the photo, involved Reblochon cheese and probably a lot of cows. I missed it accidentally, but I’m not sure the fete could have been any better than the advertisement for the fete. In fact, I reckon I would have been let down if I’d gone and there were no other innovative cow art installations to take photos of. I’m looking forward to next year’s advertisement.

April Fool’s Day in France is known as Poisson d’avril (April Fish) thanks to a bizarre tradition of sticking paper fish to people’s backs. Perhaps equivalent to ‘Kick me’ signs in English, the fish should only be attached on 1st April, and retailers encourage such behaviour by baking fish-shaped pastries and making fish-shaped chocolates. So how and why did this start? Nobody seems to know for sure but there are many theories, ranging from the date’s proximity to the Pisces astrological sign (although it falls smack bang in the middle of Aries) to when mackerals are good for eating to a French king’s change to the calendar year start date, which had been 1st April prior to his change, with many of his subjects refusing to let go of the day as a deay of celebration. And what better way to celebrate than to stick a fish on your mate’s back?
So, I gave it a go this morning. My cat, Bruno had no idea when I slapped this paper fish on his back while he slept, curled up, on his favourite soft toy (which happens to be a dog – double ‘hah!’). I giggled away and taunted him with ‘poisson d’avril‘ as I took this photo. Then I realised that the fish looks quite like a dolphin and I think the cat may have had the last laugh.

Anyway, I’m off to the bakery to pick up some fish-shaped pastries before they’re gone for another year.

Last night, La Clusaz held its annual carnival, with groups dressed in 70s disco outfits, cops and prisoners, Star Wars characters, Cleopatras being carried by mummies, various superheros, and even a ladybird. The parade is held early so that kids, like the one pictured, can watch. A power ranger handed his sword over to this kid and motioned for the kid to attack him, which he did (had I remembered to charge the battery on my proper camera, this photo would have been clearer).

With plenty of kids around before 8pm, the DJ playing the loud party music in the centre of the gathering put on “Why Don’t We Just F**k” by Greg Parys. I know, I know, it’s an English word, but I can’t imagine many parents wanting their kids swearing in English or French or any other language. Some kids danced away to the song, while a boy of about twelve just next to me teased a group of local boys the same age by wearing a mask so they couldn’t tell who he was. How did he tease them? He rubbed his mask up and down with his hand. His mask was the head of a penis. He couldn’t have timed it better with the music, although the group of boys watching looked stunned despite their preference to look cool.

For all the entertainment provided, this kid was by far the most entertaining to watch. Eventually, one of the stunned boys walked towards him and ripped his mask off before the boy grabbed it back and ran away. The boys still looked stunned.

Like all public events in La Clusaz, the parade ended with fireworks, signalling bed time for the kids and pub time for the oddly-dressed adults. I suspect the stunned boys lingered outdoors, being too old for bed and too young for the pub, and probably watched the kid in the penis mask steal his way into a pub before turning to taunt them from the window. I can’t wait for next year.

This year’s Fête des Lumières in Lyon was full of cool stuff and some disappointments too.

Held for just four days a year — and often with bitterly cold temperatures (it was about 2°C when I was there on Friday night), the streets on Lyon’s central island are closed to cars due to the huge influx of freezing pedestrians. I wrote about it here last year.

The giant Ferris wheel looked magnificent, but advertisements for new movies kept appearing when I was hoping to see something a bit less commercial.

And I wish I’d taken a photo of the ‘giant squid’ which was actually just a whole lot of cloth hanging from above that didn’t look a lot like a squid. It’s disappointing because the guide has this fantastic photo of an amazing squid, but that’s obviously just the artist’s impression before it was made. Many other illuminations suffered the same fate or weren’t working despite the darkness.

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However, the statues holding the fish was great! Pictured to the left, the four statues each had a fishing rod added, and tiny fish and ducks in bowls were dotted around (there are a few in the bottom right corner of my photo).

The fountain itself was dry, with lights and material added to simulate the flowing water. Although the photo can’t capture the flow, you can see the lights leading down from behind the statue. They impersonated water better than I imagined possible. The detail of the fishbowls impressed me further as they were a lovely touch to a great illumination.

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Up and down one of the main shopping streets were these great giant desk lamps which changed colour regularly.

They sat in the middle of round seats, but being an infrequent visitor to Lyon, I don’t remember if these seats are always here and that the creators came up with a great idea of how to fill the centres or if the seats are part of the creation.

You might also see some other lights in the street: these were illuminated cranes. They were still birds. I would have enjoyed them more if they moved just a little bit.

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This is an actual building, illuminated to appear skewed (if you look closely at the windows, you can see the illumination is weakened).

Members of the public were able to control how skewed the building looked by singing into a microphone. Different pitches caused the building to sway in different directions. This was possibly the most impressive illumination I saw due entirely to the interactivity.

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Last year’s flowers on the steps towards the Croix Rousse end of town were replaced by moving space invaders.

They started high and came down row by row, just like the game, then started all over again. They moved both horizontally and vertically through illumination of different rows and columns at different times. Very amusing.

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The place I stayed the longest didn’t involve any animation at all: it was a brass band of around twenty people who played everything from Blondie to Muse, and each member did a little spin when they played a Daft Punk medley that included ‘Around the World’.

It’s impossible to capture their spirit properly in a photo, but here’s one of the musician’s face reflecting in her own instrument.

Their clothes and movements were as quirky as their choice of songs. I don’t know who they were but they were a fantastically entertaining band to watch play. Bring on 2011.

Each year, La Clusaz hosts a moonlit walk through town (la balade au clair du lune in French) when the moon is full and bright in the sky. All the street lights are turned off, but the town is still lit by more than the moon. Candles flicker on the ground, in trees, and on window sills along the main streets which are blocked to cars and full of pedestrians and entertainers.

This year’s theme was light. I guess it would be a bit boring without any additional lighting to view the entertainment by, so the entertainment itself was illuminated. Pictured above is one of the acts that got friendly with the tourists. I love the smile on the drummer’s face as he tries to get a member of the public dancing. Their light came from the giant illuminated cones around them. This was the extremely upbeat band compared with the one I’d seen marching down the street ten minutes earlier: they sounded like a funeral procession from New Orleans.

Meanwhile, pictured on the right are two illuminated angel people on stilts, along with a juggler and a non-stilted illuminated angel person to keep them company. They were really magical to watch as they floated and wobbled carefully along the roads, sometimes backwards. The juggler had green illuminated pins which was probably a good thing, or nobody would have noticed him juggling. All the kids were fixated on the white lights.

The kids were also fixated on the big screen that took temporary silhouette photos of anyone standing in front of it. My friends and I tried to get in there to do YMCA with our arms, but the kids kept us back. When I finally muscled my way to the screen, strangers joined me before my friends could (reluctantly) make it, so I did a C by myself while the kids around me smiled as part of their poses, which was as pointless as my C without the Y, M and A since silhouettes don’t show smiles.

The giant inflatable angel, pictured, floated silently over people’s heads through town. It risked being popped as the two blokes driving it tried to get it under an arch of decorative street lights (unlit) and got it wedged between the arch and a neighbouring street light (turned off as well — no wonder they ran into it). Moments earlier, it had been floating up and down ‘watching’ a two-piece band playing something folky. By the time it made it under the street lights, everybody watching the band had turned their attention to the floating angel, breaking out in applause, mid-song, when the angel made it under the lights without popping. The band seemed less than impressed and I reckon they would have popped the inflatable angel with one of their instruments had it been close enough to try.

I imagine that trapeze artists don’t really like wind blowing them off course while they’re trying to catch each other and swing around in the air. However, St Jean de Sixt last week put an event involving wind and a trapeze. Let’s start with the exciting stuff — the trapeze. Both children and adults were allowed to have a go at this trapeze. Shoes must come off and a harness applied, but otherwise, off you go. Once up the ladder, someone on another swing would swing back and fourth while you get launched onto a swing, then get instructed to hold on with your legs and dangle your hands down, then the trapeze expert swinging opposite you grabs your waiting hands and you let your legs get loose of your swing, thus completing the trick.

And once you’re done, you can try your hand at one of the many musical instruments set up to capture the wind, or fly some of the kites on offer, or make a little boat and watch it sail with the wind on a big swimming pool. The whole event was staged on top of a hill — the windiest part of St Jean de Sixt, which doubles as a ‘ski resort’ (two drag lifts) in winter. I heard about it from a friend. The week-long event was free, which, according to my friend, happens in July when the villages and ski resorts want to attract as many holiday-makers as possible. Freebies help ensure there’s a flow of people in July, while it’s almost guaranteed in August. So, if you want cool freebie events when you visit the mountains, remember to come in July, not August.

Now that the sun has finally arrived after months of rain and even some snow on the peaks of La Clusaz last week, Annecy is getting excited about the Winter Olympics. Annecy is one of the three final candidates for the 2018 Winter Olympics, so to celebrate officially, Annecy laid out some winter sports for people to try — sans snow.

Pictured is the massive ramp for skiers to slide down and try flips, twists and backward landings. No worries if you can’t ski: there were some giant inflatable rings for zooming down the ramp on instead. Kids and adults were all keen to try the ramp, with ski boots and skis available for use. There was one guy who, according to his mates, was going to try a double back-flip, except he leant back too far at the moment of take-off and bumped the back of his helmet-clad head onto the ramp before falling in a heap on the inflatable cushion. I think the impact knocked his helmet off completely, as it was nowhere to be seen. Paramedics put him in a neck brace and carted him off. Regardless, the queue of people to try the ramp grew while they waited for the paramedics to clear the area. I think it would have put me off, but I’m not very Savoyarde I guess.

Other highlights of the day included various French celebrities dotted around being interviewed by news reporters, a hot air balloon with the Annecy 2018 logo on it wafting past, a stage with lots of entertainment, a whole swag of local food to try, and of course, some other winter sports.

Apart from the ski ramp, there was a cross-country ski track — made of plastic so that the hot summer day didn’t melt any snow. I can think of nothing more boring than forcing my feet into ski boots on a warm day, then attaching skis, then putting those skis into blue plastic tracks like reverse railway tracks, and moving my feet along. However, the kids seemed to love it, so again, it’s probably because I’m not very Savoyarde.

The luge looked like fun. Yes, there was a luge! It too functioned without actual real snow. It used wheels on rails set in concrete to keep the luge on the short flat track. The kids loved it too. To top it all off, BMX courses were set up for different levels of ability, which, of course, the kids also loved. I have no idea what BMX biking has to do with the Olympics but nobody there was complaining.

Pictured are a few musicians outside the old prison walls of Annecy, smack bang in the centre of town. No, it’s not a prison anymore, but I bet the prisoners would have loved to have heard the music back when it was (and maybe the hot raclette cheese sandwich I was eating while watching the band play). So, why were musicians set up outside this picturesque spot in Annecy? Because Monday was the Fête de la Musique — the annual event throughout France where musicians play to crowds in the streets, parks and anywhere else they fit. Rather than waffle on about it, here are some of this year’s highlights:

• A woman with bagpipes walking around casually as if everyone carries bagpipes.
• A dog totally oblivious to the thrash metal happening on stage because he couldn’t take his eyes off the ball at his owner’s feet.
• A flirty moment between teenagers who were both too shy to do anything more than flirt while a band played on the stage in front of them. He reluctantly left with his friends. She watched him leave, blushing.
• An opportunistic street performer with a diabolo (piece of string with a cylindrical thing to balance on it) who looked like it was his first time trying out the equipment. A small crowd of disbelievers had gathered.
• A reggae band headed by a guy with a #2 head shave (he sounded properly reggae though).
• Bottles of ‘orange juice’ being shared by teenagers who were eager to drink – what good kids!
• A mosh pit/circle that was started by those same teenagers with all that goodness of fresh orange juice in their blood. Lovely to see teenagers working off some of that juice through exercise.

It’s that time of year again, when movie buffs, media students and animation geeks from all over the world swarm to Annecy for the week-long International Annecy Animation Film Festival. This year, the fashion seems to be badges on bags, although I did see one guy sporting his badges all over his jeans. Yes, his jeans were entirely covered in badges.

The festival is great fun, with outdoor freebie screenings most nights of the week, and lots of animation styles to keep everyone happy. I favour the shorts: a movie-length screening of around six or more short animations. That ten minutes or so when people are entering the cinema involves more than just a hum of chatter: it’s an opportunity to throw lots of paper planes. So, on top of walking up stairs while scanning the rows of people for a few empty seats, you also need to dodge the papers zooming around the room. Long paper plane flights get a round of applause and a cheer! I saw one guy last night collecting as many as he could from the aisle beside him to relaunch, while the guy in front of me ripped off another sheet from his notebook to start folding another plane.

In fact, the planes are so common at the festival, that they’re an integral part of this year’s animated trailer for the festival, which you can watch below (and yes, that’s the actual cinema at the end).

Thankfully, the planes stop flying as soon as the first animation starts. However, between animations, the “done thing” is to make a popping sound with your mouth. You know, when you were a kid and you’d stick a finger inside your mouth near your cheek, then flick it out to make a pop? That’s the sound that gets made between movies. This is a whole separate set of cultural norms that seem to exist in Annecy purely for the animation festival.

I guess it was nice to escape some aspects of French culture for the evening, but by the time I left that cinema, I was looking forward to a crepe and seeing men in stripy shirts and berets riding bikes with baguettes under their arms and saying “ooh la la” a lot to the background sounds of a piano accordion.