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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: Storms, stationery and pigs named Napoleon

This week there's been a lot of weather chat, plus some political watching and the start of 'stationery season' - our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Inside France: Storms, stationery and pigs named Napoleon
Storms lashed France this week as the heatwave broke. Photo by Valery HACHE / AFP

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

In a development  guaranteed to make Brits feel at home, the whole of France has been talking about the weather this week, specifically rain.

Rain storms over the weekend were welcomed with joy when they broke another scorching heatwave and brought cooler, fresher air.

But as the week went on the storms got heavier, leading to flash flooding in cities including Paris and Marseille until, on Thursday, an extremely violent storm hit the island of Corsica, claiming six lives.

IN PICTURES Flash-flooding hits Paris

While storms along the Mediterranean coastline are normal as the temperatures fall and autumn arrives – they’re known as épisodes cévanol – weather experts predict that they will be unusually intense this year, due to the extremely high temperatures recorded over the Mediterranean this summer.

Macron return

After a few weeks holidaying in Fort Brégançon, Emmanuel Macron stepped back into the limelight on Friday with an official visit to the Riviera town of Bormes-les-Mimosas to attend the ceremony marking its liberation in 1944.

The trip down to the Riviera villa of Brégançon is traditional for French presidents, since the property has been the official ‘holiday home’ of the holder of the office since the 1960s.

In previous years Macron has combined beach time with hosting meetings or foreign leaders, but this year his entourage let it be known that he needed a break and would be spending a couple of weeks ‘studying’ – a sign perhaps that even the famously hyperactive Macron was exhausted after two years of pandemic, followed by war in Europe and back-to-back presidential and parliamentary elections.

Pencil time

Have you ever wondered why French schoolkids have those enormous bags? It’s because schools insist on a ridiculous amount of kit – 29 items are stationery alone are apparently required for the start of each school year.

Although the kids still have a couple of weeks of holiday left, this week the back-to-school allowance was paid out to parents and supermarkets began filling up with the dizzying array of pens, pencils and geometry kit for la rentrée.

Cake, pigs and Napoleon

And I’ve been greatly enjoying researching our French History Myths series, where we delve into some of the widely-touted ‘facts’ about French history – did Marie Antoinette really tell the poor to eat cake? Has it ever been illegal to name your pig Napoleon? And does the French army always surrender? Find the full series HERE

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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INSIDE FRANCE

Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

From the latest on the increasingly crazy French elections to the powers of a president, the influence of sports stars and the lustre of the Olympics, our weekly newsletter Inside France looks at what we have been talking about in France this week.

Inside France: French lose the plot, sports stars speak out and Paris prices fall

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

Losing the plot?

Welcome to another crazy week in French politics – I’m not saying that this election is getting to me, but the other night I dreamed I was having an argument with far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I think I need a holiday.

France might need a holiday too – the political discourse is getting increasingly wild, leading to our columnist John Lichfield to declare that the country has “taken leave of its senses”

Latest polling suggests that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National party would take the biggest vote share at 33 percent, followed by the increasingly fragile leftist coalition Nouveau Front Populaire with 29 percent and then Emmanuel Macron’s centrist group with 22 percent. Those figures would give none of the blocks an overall majority, instead leading to a total parliamentary deadlock.

French election breakdown: All the latest from the campaign trail

Earlier this week ‘Article 16 of the constitution’ was trending on French Twitter; this is the one that lays out the powers afforded to the president versus the prime minister, as people tried to work out what – if any – decisions Macron would be able to take in the final three years of his mandate.

READ ALSO: What does a French prime minister actually do

The satirical magazine Le Canard Enchâiné perhaps sums it up best in its cartoon, showing a man about to shoot himself in the head with a gun labelled ‘Rassemblement National’ and saying “We never tried this before”.

The Canard Enchainé’s cartoon as posted on Instagram

Sports stars engaged

On a more positive note, it’s been nice to see France’s biggest sports stars use their platforms to encourage people to vote, and speaking out against hatred and intolerance and in favour of diversity and inclusion.

I could not disagree more with the Spain goalkeeper Unai Simon, who criticised Kylian Mbappé’s call for people to vote against the far right, saying that footballers should “leave politics to other people”.

The whole point of living in a democracy is that politics belongs to everybody. As Mbappé said: “The Euros are very important in our careers, but first and foremost we are citizens and I don’t think we can be disconnected from the world around us.”

And I admit I’m biased about this – I’ve been a fan ever since I saw him make his professional debut at the age of 18 in my then-hometown of Castres – but I was also pleased to see French rugby legend Antoine Dupont taking a stand on another social issue, appearing on the front cover of LGBTQ magazine Têtu to decry homophobia (although the cover photo did rather make him look like he had forgotten his shades and was squinting into bright sunlight).

Talking France

We of course discuss all the election latest with John Lichfield in the latest episode of the Talking France podcast – and in what was perhaps linked to my need for a holiday we’re also discussing places to visit in France this summer.

Amid warnings of over-tourism we’re taking a look at the places predicted to be most crowded this summer – and suggesting some alternatives. Listen here or on the link below.

Fun and Games

It was thought that people might avoid Paris this summer – but the combination of good deals on the Olympic ticket resale site plus travel and accommodation costs dropping back to seasonal norms has seen a flurry of people booking a last-minute trip to the Games.

Personally I always thought the ‘everyone fleeing the capital’ narrative was a little over-played, but it’s been interesting to see that attempted price-gouging has also largely failed – at the start of the year there were Airbnb listings for frankly insane prices (I saw one that was €7,000 for two weeks), while now costs are largely at the summer average.

Paris travel deals to take advantage of as prices fall ahead of Olympics

Wrestling 

If you’re a Games fan I highly recommend the temporary exhibition at Paris’ Musée de l’histoire de l’immigration (a strong contender for the capital’s best museum, in my opinion) on the history of Olympics and their politics.

It also includes this statue which we’re told depicts ‘wrestling’ at the Olympics in antiquity. If you say so . . .

Photo: The Local

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It’s published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.

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