Nicely Rested After Vacation? Everybody Up and Lets Party!

France Forgets Summer by Celebrating Beginning of Autumn Season

However, there are differences - this IS France - and one of them is that this time of year has a name, 'La Rentrée,' which means: return, or reopening.... of schools, courts, everything. It is not good enough to merely send the kids back, you have to have a party about it. We all slouched back about the 4th of September this year; but this weekend just finished, was the party.

As usual, the Communist Party's 'Fête de l'Humanté;' attended by their usual hordes of reds, played out in the rain and mud at the Paris suburb of La Courneuve, just northeast of Paris, beside St. Denis. The theme this year was 'The Bomb - Why France Can Live Without It,' and there were plenty of sausages, petitions, rum-punches with 'punch' and good old rock music, to go with it. It is supposed to be a good show every year, but it is always in rain and mud.

The 'Buffet Campagnard' also takes place rain or shine. Taxpayers who neglect this chance, go dry for a year.

Also in the rain, the annual 24-hour world championship motorcycle race, the 'Bol d'Or' whizzed, skated, and slid its way around the track down at Le Castellet, watched by 100 thousand bikers, camped in, what else? the mud. To conclude our rare sports round-up: the surprise victor: the Kawasaki team.

On Sunday, throughout France, 'Les 12e Journées du Patrimonie' happened. Seven million citizens turned out to inspect and tour public buildings such as the Assembly National, the Elysees Palace, and the Paris City Hall, known locally as L'Hôtel de Ville - as it is called in every city, town and village in France. A couple from Bordeaux expected to tour five sites in the capitol before returning home on the TGV in the evening.

It is said that Paris is a collection of 100 villages; to which I'm sure the historian, Fernand Braudel, would have agreed. If it indeed so, then the Paris region, 'L'Ile de France,' contains many hundreds more, one of which I live in.

On Saturday, L'Etang-la-ville (which is neither a lake nor large enough to be a town) held its annual 'Fête des Associations.' The parking lot of 'L'Hôtel de Ville' - we have one too! - was roped off, tents were erected, and all the associations and clubs that exist locally had stands set up to recruit new members for the new club 'year.'

Since the village here has only a Bar-Tabac-Café and there is no restaurant, you have a choice between watching cable-TV or joining a club, or several.

Well, think about it. We are in this Conglopolis with about 12 million inhabitants and a lot of people who live in the village work in Paris - where, even though it is '100 villages,' it is only so for those that live in them.

Recruiters for one of the two local parent's associations; their last chance this school year to outnumber the competition.

What clubs and associations are available here? There's theatre, painting for kids and adults, voice training, a library for adults and another for kids, three dancing clubs, a kid's choir, every sort of music, and musical comedy. Sports includes swimming (we borrow a neighboring commune's pool), tennis, yoga, gym, judo, and fencing. There are two parent's organizations for school kids and one for the municipal babysitting. There is a 'Welcome' association (Minitel number: 36 15 AVF ACCUEIL) through which you can have French conversations in English and Spanish, learn a little patchwork, brush up on decorative Islamic arts, frame pictures, play Scrabble, go walking (the Forest of Marly surrounds the village), take cooking, or take part in two jumble sales. (Next one: 22.-24. September.) You can join a club to protect the village from the nasty old railroad, the SNCF; the one that takes everybody downtown, since about 1892. There's scouts, a parish association, a computer club, a photo club, and finally, an association called "Radio Strange FM". Oh, I left out the 'Green Hand.'

All the clubs in town try to recruit new members during 'Portes Ouverts,' rain or shine.

With all this - and it's not the whole list - it's no wonder that the TV-cable company is unhappy with their local penetration; even though reception of anything except rain - snow on TV - is nearly impossible without it as the village is in a sort of gorge.

After the clubs showed their stuff, there was a 'Buffet Campagnard' provided by the mayor (taxpayer's money that is), set up in tents, with musicians in another tent. Since rain had seriously started by this time, a good many of those present huddled under the arches at one side of the 'L'H=F4tel de Ville' and, I suppose, told a lot of lies about their summer vacations.

And this Sunday scene was repeated in hundreds of thousands of villages throughout France, attended by everybody who was not standing in line to tour 'L'Hôtel de Ville' in Paris.

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Updated 07/95