Serious question

Just when I was thinking two carnivals in a week would suffice for a lifetime, a third came long. And a fourth beckons.

Menton is a fine resort situated just after Monaco ends, going east along the Riviera, but before Italy starts.


Why the words - "shall we go to the La Fête du Citron ?" - even occurred to me, let alone escaped from my lips, I cannot tell.


One answer could be that it gave an excuse for another trip along the coast by rail, this time straying eastwards beyond Nice.

I mustn't prattle on about the joys of taking a train journey on the French Riviera; just do it if you find yourself in the area.

Nor should I attempt to describe La Fête du Citron at undue length. It's not so different from the carnivals of mimosas or whatever, and even the colour wouldn't change much if it were not for the similar abundance of oranges.






So getting back to the subject I identified in my headline, what exactly is the point of polenta?

It was served with stewed beef as part of an agreeable enough meal at Le Majestic, a brasserie located between the station at Menton and the ticket office where they charged you 14 euros a head to proceed to the promenade and find somewhere to stand and watch the parade.

For the last daytime procession of the carnival, Le Majestic was taking no chances and offered a single set menu - the beef, preceded by an excellent rough pate with, fittingly, lemon tart to finish and a little jug of wine thrown in - for 21 euros.

The ambiance was jolly, helped along by two bibulous couples on a coach trip from Sancerre - "what name do you give your husband's private parts?" one of the messieurs asked at one point.

Looks more interesting than ours
Picture: Nofolete

But no one could quite work out why the beef had to be accompanied by polenta, except that we were so close to Italy.

It just seemed to be slab of nothing, edible but desperately uninteresting and devoid of taste unless you smothered it in the sauce from the meat.

That blogging standby Wikipedia describes it thus:

Many new recipes have given new life to an item which is, in essence, a fairly bland and common food, invigorating it with various cheeses or tomato sauces.

But giving something that has no taste "new life" by adding cheese or tomato is surely like making the phone book sound great by getting a wonderful singer to warble extracts from J or K. Or have I missed something?

The last of my carnivals is this Sunday and the good news is that it's in Le Lavandou. I'll eat at home.

Coup de Tête pour Nice en fête

Get the idea?
Picture: cjwooduk

We hate Man United. Well I don't as it happens, but this isn't really a football posting so I'll come back to that in a minute.

Where I should start is not at the Nice carnival either, but on the Corniche, which I have just been able to enjoy for the first time since I saw Edward Fox whizzing round its perilous cliffside bends in The Day of the Jackal.

That was a long time ago and I have naturally travelled along the same coastline, from Cannes to Nice, many times since. But enjoyment of the spellbinding scenery is, on the whole, impaired when you have to take care not to drive into the sea.

So I insisted on leaving the car at Saint Raphaël and continuing to Nice by train.

Rail is easily my preferred means of transport and I know there are several spectacular train journeys in the world. But this was a real treat, from the exhilaration of racing along parallel to the Mediterranean shore to the pleasure of trundling through cuttings ablaze with mimosas.

One carnival goes rather a long way for my tastes, and I had been in Bormes-les-Mimosas only a week earlier when Bernadette Chirac opened the corso there.






But the current Nice festival does boast a number of outstanding floats representing the efforts of people from each quarter of the city, and was well worth half a day. We also found an excellent stop for lunch, the Indian lounge, run by a family from Pondichéry and now added to my short list of good French Indian restaurants.

When the procession got under way, the giant caricatures of Chirac (and Bernadette), Ségo and Sarko and the other presidential contenders were especially impressive.


And then there was Zinedine Zidane. Which brings me back to Manchester United.

That statement of hatred in my opening line is also the opening line of a refrain heard, with varying force depending on which club's supporters you are listening to, at most English football grounds.

In France, just now, they hate Man Utd, too. The French naturally prefer Arsenal in any case, given the stronger links that make them seem almost part of Ligue 1. But in normal circumstances, they also respect Man Utd for the mighty club that it is.

The new antipathy follows last week's match against Lille. Everyone by now has a view of the events involving Man Utd fans and French police, and also of Giggs's quickly taken free kick that won the game; there has been comment here as elsewhere.

But limiting myself to the free kick controversy and Lille's petulant walk-off, I couldn't help feeling, as I watched the Zidane character in the Nice carnival parade, that double standards were at play in the French reaction. Man Utd's sense of fair play has been put in question and the referee has been pilloried.

Yet all Giggs did, apparently without breaking any rule of the game, was to make the most of an advantage awarded because of some unfair play by Lille.

Why on earth should a free kick on the edge of the penalty area be delayed to the convenience of the offending team?

Even if that view is open to debate, surely we can at least agree that no verbal provocation justified Zidane's actions in the World Cup final, much as some have charitably expressed understanding of them.

Yet in Nice here was further evidence that far from being a matter of personal disgrace that also tarnished the image of an admirable French national side, Zidane's show of yobbish aggression can be seen as a source of pride.

The carnival caricature had the great man's head thrusting forward as it had towards the chest of Italy's Marco Materrazzi last July.

And the city authorities treated the crowds to repeated bursts over the sound system of that cuddly French hit, Dance of the Headbutt, glorifying the footballer's moment of madness. Without wishing to rain on the carnival, I cannot help thinking that this sends out a depressingly wrong message to youngsters who idolise great sportsmen.