The cartoon says it all. A slouching, slovenly youth tells his girlfriend: "You don't feel safe any more with all these old people on the street."
Just ahead of the couple, a woman in her 80th year - christened Mamie Dalton by my local paper, Var-Matin, after Ma Dalton, from the Wild West family of little and big screen fame - brandishes a pistol at the driver of a bus full of children and says something along the lines of my headline. "Move your bus or I shoot the lot of you."
This is granny rage as practised in the normally sedate resort of Sanary, just west of Toulon.
Var-Matin should feel honoured. For my account on the day Mamie Dalton lost her cool, I rely entirely on the priceless, drole report of my confrère Michel Pasquini, flagged on la une and dominating page three of today's edition.
A mundane traffic hold-up lay at the root of these bizarre goings-on.
The anti-heroine of Pasquini's tale became agitated when the bus, carrying children from a local summer camp or colonies de vacances, stopped ahead of her, blocking her Peugeot.
She did not know, or was not too keen on exploring, the reason (the bus was, in turn, blocked, by a stationary vehicle ahead of him).
So she hooted her horn, and hooted it some more. This failing to budge the unbudgeable, she jumped - or perhaps dawdled - from her car, and began remonstrating loudly with the poor bus driver.
Exasperated that not even her roadside tantrum could force the bus to proceed, she got - as Var-Matin puts it - "the bit between her teeth" and drew her gun.
"Tension mounts," the story goes on. "The driver and the children's monitor become worried about the turn of events. There is no panic, but there is fear.......the driver closes the doors and windows and tells the monitor to alert the director of the camp and the police."
By now, the errant driver who had caused the blockage has returned to the scene and the road is again clear. But the woman won't let go. She follows the bus until it reaches the nearby colonie and has another go at the driver. And another still, at the director of the camp when she intervenes and stands between them.
"I didn't want the children to be witnesses to this," said la directrice. "Yes, I was scared when she pulled out her gun....but it was my duty to protect the camp."
She was scared for the very good reason that she did not at that point know that our 79-year-oldSanaryenne battleaxe's firearm was an imitation revolver. This is not a detail that helps the old lady a great deal, since the sense of danger everyone else felt means she could still end up facing court for armed violence.
Without wishing to alarm anyone heading for these parts, I should add that Mamie Dalton is free again pending whatever action the authorities decide to take. More reassuringly, questions are being asked about her "aptitude to keep a driving licence". A policeman offers the understated observation that her comportement when interviewed did not correspond to her behaviour of the day before.
If the worst, for her future motoring ambitions, comes to the worst, she can always get in touch with Salut!.
I will, subject to prudent conditions, introduce her to a lady of my acquaintance, of similar age with no known homicidal tendencies but a well-practised skill at cadging lifts to and from concerts and other events she wishes, as a non-driver, to attend. That's how we met. At 78, she is perhaps the oldest hitchhiker in the Var and Mamie Dalton may need to learn some tricks from her.
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