What kind of person visits Egypt and complains about those wretched pyramids obstructing the view? Or objects to flamingos in the Camargue, camels in the Sahara or Gustave Eiffel's monstrous heap of metal just when you're trying to enjoy the Champs-de-Mars?
The same sort, perhaps, as marched last year on the town hall in Le Beausset, near Toulon, in the beautiful southern French department of the Var, to lodge formal protests about the noise. But what noise? Unruly fellow-tourists? Unexpected major building works? A new airport that no one mentioned when they booked?
None of the above. Step forward the guilty parties: cicadas, or les cigales as they are charmingly known in French.
Believe it or not, some hard-of-thinking holidaymakers did take serious offence last year when these pesky creatures, whose reassuring chatter seems to many an essential part of the Provencal experience, found them altogether too chatty.
My local newspaper, Var-Matin, does not record what response the mayor's office gave those who didn't just raid shop shelves for pesticide.
This being France, my guess is that if they received no redress at the mairie, the aggrieved souls felt at a loss since as holidaymakers they could hardly go on strike.
So they mounted roadblocks, trashed public monuments and set fire to cars before complaining again, this time about a heavy-handed police response. It would, after all, have been their republican right; doesn't my clip describe cigales as the world's noisiest insects?
This also being France, the saga has now been immortalised in song.
Aioli, a comedy group from Toulon, call it Touche pas aux Cigales - hands off the cicadas - and Var-Matin helpfully reproduces extracts from the lyrics. The bit quoted below is addressed to holidaymakers from Paris or Bordeaux but could apply to anyone:
You who come here to rest. You can get out and about, go on little trips, do as you please, drive at 30k/ph, p*** off the fishermen, swim beyond the buoys and even drown yourselves ... but there's one thing you must never do (or I'll give you hell): keep your hands off the cigales
Of course, there are two sides to every story, even this one. The Marvellous Provence website says of cicadas:
- Highly complex creatures, both zoologically and mythically, cicadas have fascinated cultures through the millenia. Some liken them to raucous layabouts who sing and idle the summer away.
- Others see them as exuberant beings who understand how to seize the moment and make the very most of life. Either might apply to the people of Provence themselves, of course, depending on your point of view.
But it all reminds me of the GP who said after a testing open surgery where tourists needing attention shouted and jostled in their efforts to jump the queue: "Why do they bother with holidays? They arrive stressed, they stress when they're here and they go home stressed."
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