Les Anglos
by Les
Woodland
Years ago there was a man in Luton who invented a pointed car. The bonnet was a vertical wedge and his theory was that on striking pedestrians he would sweep them aside rather then run over them. It would save a great many lives.
A local journalist came to see him and a Sunday paper promised to run the story big the following weekend. The man bought a paper the minute the newsagent opened and indeed there he was, pictures page-wide, arms crossed and beaming in front of the extension to his car. At last, he thought, everyone would see sense and also build pointed cars. And then his face fell. For across the top of the page and inch-high were the words TWIT OF THE YEAR.
And now someone else in Britain is experiencing that same sinking feeling. Over here in France we have an enormous rally called the Sémaine Fédérale, which means Federation Week, the federation being the FFCT, the national cycle-touring organisation. Last summer's was in Quimper, pronounced Camp-air, in the northwest. The next is in the famously cold town of Aurillac in the south.
More than 160,000 people go, including a lot from Britain, so it's not surprising that the magazine Cyclopassion gives it a lot of coverage. Most of it is of athletic Frenchmen on bikes made from clouds and whispers, but low on one page is a large picture of what I take to be a husband, wife and daughter on a triplet. They are trying to smile as they struggle up a hill, so their grimaces aren't perhaps showing them at their best. Like the man in Luton, though, they were happy to oblige. They will be pleased to see their picture. Until, that is, they read the caption underneath it that states 'even jokes of machines like this got round the hilly courses'.
The name on the frame betrays their nationality. (Which reminds me: if you ride a Roberts bike in France, you should be aware that the big letters down your frame tube are slang for 'tits'.) I shall do no more to increase their embarrassment.
I suppose there must be people somewhere in France who ride unusual bikes, but many view even tandems as eccentric. As one French friend said of Paris-Brest-Paris: 'Whenever you see someone with too many wheels, or wheels that are too small, or someone lying flat on a bike like a hammock, or with enough luggage to cross the Gobi, they are "les anglos".' He looked at me as if to ask if all Brits were like that, a product of a cold and windy island where it gets dark before tea for six months of the year. And, as all French people know, where hot water bottles and strong tea are much preferred to sex.
I had the same feeling a couple of years ago when I found two (or was it three?) Welshmen on tricycles attempting to put their case to a man outside a supermarket between the Tourmalet and Aubisque. I'm hazy about how many there were because all tricyclists have beards and wear flat caps and it's hard to be sure you've not counted the same one twice.
Anyway, the Frenchman spoke no English and the Welshman knew little French beyond asking the way and securing beer.
'Are you invalids?' the man was asking. The Welshmen may have lived beyond their athletic prime, as witnessed by an element of Lycra-straining, but they were not ill.
'Have you lost your sense of balance, then?'
I got the impression that that could come later in the evening, induced by alcohol, but the man wasn't sure that anyone neither ill nor likely to topple over unprovoked would drag a third wheel round France and least of all over its highest mountains.
In the end both sides gave up. The Welshman settle for the only words they could explain and which doubtless had got them out of similar scrapes all round the Hexagon - 'c'est bon pour le stabilité'. That was true, if misleading, but French incredulity was assuaged. The Frenchman in turn settled for the only words he thought were appropriate, which were 'Vous êtes totalement fou', which means 'You are utterly bonkers.' I am not sure the Welshmen understood, but then maybe in Wales they always smile and wave farewell to people who have just insulted them.
Afterwards the Frenchman turned to me, a spectator at the modern-day sport of tricyclist-baiting, rolled his eyes in the way that only Frenchmen can and said 'J'ai raison, non?' I agreed. He was indeed right. All tricyclists are completely bonkers. Especially those who ride over high mountains.
Not sure about the triplet people at the Sem Fed, though. I just feel sorry for them. Still, maybe they don't speak French either and they won't read Cyclopassion and therefore the won't know. And if you promise to never let on that I told you here, they can carry on riding their 'joke of a machine' in perfect contentment. So, not a word then, eh?
© Les Woodland