Parade

Yesterday, the town put on a parade for its Olympic athletes. It's a sporty place, Antibes, and it lives off its reputation for health and fitness. Even the Gendarmerie gets in on the act, owning a barracks on a delectable piece of seafront real estate, where police divers are trained. Why the crystal charms of the Mediterranean are seen as a suitable rehearsal for scouring Parisian sewers and northern canals full of shopping trolleys beats me.

The parade consisted of a 'bataille de fleurs'. Floats were decorated with thousands of locally grown flowers, mostly carnations, roses and lilies. The painstaking work of constructing and then decorating the floats was all done by amateur associations drawn from the different districts of the town, who also coughed up for the bands.

The problem is that France (except perhaps in the mining regions of the far north) hasn't really got a good band tradition. Most of the local fanfares and harmonies are at the comic end of the 'dreadful' spectrum. Jazz bands are another matter, and some of the local marching jazz bands are musically impressive as well as theatrically entertaining.

Lots of noise, passing for music, was needed, so the various organisers and their sponsors turned to Italy, which still has bands in profusion, willing to play Verdi or the theme from Ghostbusters with equal panache. Yesterday's assortment included a very large marching ensemble from Turin: musically disciplined but tame; the fabulously raucous Folkloristica band from Betolle near Siena, who had so much percussion that it had to be wheeled on carts attached to the musicians midriffs. They played their hearts out; and then a strangely polychromatic (in the colour as well as the musical sense) band from Liguria, Rumpe e Streppa, but composed of musicians with southern roots. In addition to the usual massed clarinets of Italian bands, they also had Neapolitan percussion. Some of the bandsmen appeared to be carrying salames wrapped in clingfilm. Very exotic: I'd love to know how salame parts are notated! You can see one ready to be brought into action just behind the Rumpe e Streppa banner. Their general musical accomplishment can be appreciated at the following web link:

http://the-funniest-videos.com/viewvideo.php?id=mQUhy4aBI8M

Finally, there was an ensemble of sbandieratori from Alba in Piedmont. The musicians were only a handful - two trumpeters and four drummers - but they could be heard for miles, and were a worthy accompaniment to some pretty impressive flag hurling.

All this feast to the ears was accompanied by the usual downside of French parades: inane commentary on the Tannoy and half-hearted routines from majorettes, whose skimpy parodies of military uniforms didn't prevent rivulets of sweat from creating strange, pallid interruptions in the orange glow of the fake tan applied to their sometimes generously dimensioned thighs and calves. But the piece de resistance was a gayly pink Cadillac, containing Miss Antibes and next to her the runner up Miss Antibes, identical in their barbiedoll blondness and clearly identical in their mutual antagonism for each other, accompanied by a Claude François look-alike. According to those old enough to know, poor old Claude the Crooner dropped his clogs in the bath, decades ago, apparently whilst changing a lightbulb. The look-alike had so many wrinkles around his crooner's smile, it was obvious that he had spent the years since the original's demise soaking up the master's vibes in the same bathtub, probably without a change of water.