I have just read two books about France and the French: Lucy Wadham’s The Secret Life of France (Faber) and Graham Robb’s The Discovery of France (Picador). Although ostensibly they tackle the same subject, they are very different. What they both have in common, though, is being dressed up as something that they are not.
Archive for October, 2009
Writing dangerously
Thursday, October 29th, 2009Nothing has changed?
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
There has been a sheep market in Tarascon since at least 1158
At the end of September every year, for the last 851 years at least, there has been a livestock fair in Tarascon in the Ariège département in the Pyrenees. This year the sheep seem to be exclusively tarasconnais – the breed being named after the town – with impressive corkscrew horns. A farmer climbs over a hurdle, picks up the back leg of one and inspects her belly. She is heavily pregnant, like nearly all her sisters. Only a couple of concave mothers are already suckling their weak-legged lambs. The farmer offers 75 Euros per sheep. The seller refuses. “77,” he insists. The farmer moves on. The sheep hide their heads from the sun under the flanks of their neighbours. The air smells feisty, of sweat, wool and sheep shit. Here, apparently, nothing has changed for centuries.
