We could have done a report on vacation departures, but you know bomb threats. Or a subject on mushroom picking, but climate change, you got it. Or even an article on the good-products-of-our-terroirs, but inflation, you yourself know. From the Marseille office, we could have written a paper on the newfound happiness of OM supporters, but the city club lost (again) on Saturday evening in Nice. This shows how gloomy the news is these days. We even wrote an article for you to explain why your depression related to these is normal.
How difficult it is to find a little lightness. So, when we saw that the Boulomanes de La Ciotat pétanque club was celebrating its 100th anniversary this Sunday, suffice to say that we didn’t hesitate much. Do you think! A friendly bowler older than the Israeli-Palestinian conflict! And Jon, its president, was in good form behind the bar brought out for the occasion, although he refused to sing at the end of the grilled pork and mash meal, at the time of the blind test. “I didn’t drink enough!” “, he apologized. Alcohol is good for him. As usual.
“As soon as you turn on the TV, there is only bad news”
Here, this Sunday, there is no question of talking about current affairs. There are other, more pressing problems. In particular those resulting from the draw of the 18 double teams which competed in the afternoon. “Who are you playing with?” », asks a younger person to an older one. “With Gé”. “Oh, well, you might as well have lost it.” It’s not nice for Gé, but it made you laugh.
However, we still believed that in the middle of these sixty people gathered around petanque courts, lunch tables and a small stage for entertainment, the sinister train of news was going to catch up with us: “Una mattina…”. “Mi sono alzato…” “O bella ciao, bella ciao, bella ciao, ciao, ciao…”, shout on the guitar the musician and the singer who came for the occasion. A song that speaks of war, death, resistance, freedom. Please, no! This is a Sunday far from the crazy news.
Shortly before 4 p.m., the tournament begins. Their feet more fueled than ever by the pastis balloons, the skittles of wine and the double whiskies, the team engage in cheerful confrontations which go not without their share of provocations: “Well… that’s not how I I taught you how to shoot,” says a young, tattooed forty-year-old. “It looks like a bitch shot*,” we joke on a neighboring field. Sometimes the tone rises. Pétanque is like politics, it’s serious and sometimes we argue with each other. “But we forget everything there,” explains a lady, balls in hand waiting for her turn. “Because as soon as you turn on the TV, there’s only bad news, so that’s the parenthesis,” she continues, getting up to go play.
“Of course we still think of these poor people”
Others, faced with the incongruity of the presence of a journalist who came to talk to them about war and inflation in the middle of a game of pétanque, cast a look of surprise. Then opt for an answer that seems consensual. “Of course we still think of these poor people,” assure two friends who then slip away to devote themselves to their activity.
And while the games follow one another under a pleasantly veiled sky so as not to suffer the assaults of a still darting autumnal sun, the immutable problems of Provençal humanity return: “But where is the meter that we measure? ! “.
* In Provençal, a small unidentified object. By extension, a child.