"Monsieur, monsieur, s'il vous plaît."
The last time I heard those words directed at me, they came from across the hedge between our house and next door. I had been playing my guitar on the terrace without causing distress - or, at any rate, noticeably doing so - but had now burst into song.
It was all quite discreet. And at nine-thirty in the evening at the height of summer, in a holiday resort, it hardly seemed the most inconsiderate activity to contemplate. Maybe my neighbour had just heard Streets of London once too often, and no one could blame her for that.
Advance 10 years or more and the same words were on younger lips. It was the end of the Corso in Le Lavandou, that annual explosion of colour and invention when dozens of floats, decorated with extravagant floral designs, parade along the seafront and the streets come alive with exotic dancers and marching bands from near and far.
As everyone pressed forward, elbows at the ready, for the Bataille des Fleurs, to grab flowers from the tractors and trailers on which they had been so painstakingly arranged, a small girl's long hair had become entangled in a button of my jacket. In the carnival hubbub, it had taken several attempts for her to attract my attention. Just as well I hadn't had much chance to move far during her vain attempts to get me to hear her. At least she wasn't complaining about my singing, though I am sure she would.
The story is just my excuse to post a few photographs from the event. It happened a week last Sunday but the grim drame at a Jewish school in Toulouse next morning left me with no time or, if I am honest, stomach for writing about a happy day on the Mediterranean.
But at this distance from the ugliness of last week, I am ready to recall a striking example of the big occasions the French do rather well.
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