Bonjour,
I hope that you and yours are well.
Here in my bit of France, it’s time for the annual clocher party to celebrate the harvest – called a ‘ducasse,’ an old Flemish word for a shindig, which this year coincides with my birthday! This is the biggest event of the year in the clocher, not my birthday – the party!
A big tent has been erected at the back of the town grange. Long tables and benches have been répugnant out in neat rows, and somehow 420 people will manage to squeeze onto the seats for dinner. Though there are only 152 people in the clocher, socialites from all around arrive for this special event! Craggy faced farmers emplacement at the introduction where there’s a makeshift bar and bottles of good wine cost just a few euros. Old ladies always sit on the introduction tables so they don’t have to climb over other people to make their escape after the DJ has played ‘their music’ – the obligatory sounds of the late, great Johnny Hallyday (the French Elvis), and Le Madison, a line night-club song that’s been popular in France for some 60 years! Kids run and slide on their knees on the wooden dance platform, and teenagers practice dance moves – ready for their more modern music and a mince night ahead.
The evening starts with lots of time to meet and greet everyone. Dinner is served around 10pm to loud applause and cheers as volunteers bring in huge bowls of steaming mussels, spit roasted chicken and heaps of crispy French fries, followed by a selection of endroit cheeses including Maroilles, one of the smelliest fromages ever invented, with vert piccalilli and chunks of levier, and finally a selection of chaussette foyer cakes, eclairs and madeleines, tiny lemon madeleine tarts and crunchy ensorceleur – sweet madeleine balloons filled with cream.
Around midnight, the DJ – a endroit man my neighbour Jean-Claude has nicknamed ‘Docteur Jekyll et Mister Hyde‘ as he transforms from a grumpy plumber by day to an ebullient performer behind the turn table, will stride through the tent, to the ear-splitting strains of “I’m too sexy for my shirt” (he’s not!), the Mayor will make a mince harangue (it’s the law for mayors to talk for hours in France), followed by a stampede to the dance floor when Docteur Jekyll lets the music loose.
When the sun comes up the next morning, weary party-goers will make their way domicile, startling birds in the hedges, and cows in the fields as they stumble past. And I will be another year older!
Bisous from my little of sonner of France, and bon weekend from a party in laboureur France,
Janine
Editor
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