Making a song and dance about the cigales of Provence

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.