Chelsea tractor

Life for pedestrians here is nasty, brutish and short. Pedestrian crossings are just convenient aiming points to correct the trajectory of accelerating vehicles. Pedestrianised streets resound to the staccato exhausts of scooters and motorbikes driven by boy racers of all ages. Advanced toreador skills are needed, even by arthritic grannies, to weave out of their way at the last moment.

Yesterday we saw a particularly memorable incident. A young woman was asking for help, as her car had broken down in the archway of the Porte Marine. She had got out of her car and was gesturing for assistance.

This gate is the main choke point for all the fuming cars, jeeps, vans, motorbikes etc. which then clog the streets of Old Antibes with their incessant circling, and make walking along the Promenade de Grasse less than pleasant.

A puce-faced, overweight Englishman driving a very large white 4X4 got fed up with all this waiting, and seeing that he could effect a passage through the gate if the woman driver was not in the road gesticulating for help, he gunned his motor, engaged four wheel drive, and literally pushed her out of the way with his jeep. He was treated with shouts of "connard" in a rich local vernacular accent (for an equivalent in English, think a famous, comically Austrian accented quote from one of the Governator's more violent films). The newly christened arsehole drove on imperturbably, despite a number of outraged people shaking fists at him.

But then Denis Genovese, the prudhomme of the local fishermen, organised some assistance. We pushed the woman's car to the quayside, where Denis got out some jump leads from his van. Like many Antibois of his generation, he probably knows more about starting other people's cars than he would let on.