French Letter: Dog watching and elderly Breton cyclists in Lycra

The Café de la Place, our usual daytime watering hole, is taking its summer break early this year, so on Wednesday — market day — my wife and I looked into Les Marronniers, which, if you discount La Buvette, opposite the station, is its main competition. 

In recent years, since the closure of L‘Hermine — a bar in which I always felt I was not so much welcomed as tolerated — the Marronniers have served as the local bookies, part of the state-controlled PMU betting network. This means that half the customers spend their time, pencils in hand, engrossed in the racing pages of Ouest-France, looking up only at the moment of truth, caught on the overhead television screens, to observe their investments as they gallop, or stumble, over the finishing line. 

I presume that they are not growing rich on the basis of their equine expertise. But they seem happy enough, as if it is the journey, rather than the destination, that matters — an approach to life I have also observed in bars in Liverpool, Belfast and Dublin. 

Sitting around the counter, the other French regulars — the ones there for the conversation — say very little. They have known each other all their lives. They nod bonjours to each other and signal to the barman with an upraised finger when they need a refill, usually of white wine or Kir — the latter a blend of wine and crème de cassis, a sickly blackcurrant liqueur. 

Dogs are welcome visitors, moving from customer to customer in search of a good stroking. An Irish setter exuded dignity and the sense of a life well-lived; an overweight pug hoovered the floor. Outside, tethered to a lampost, what might have been a Jack Russell crossed with a rat or a Chihuahua, barked in protest. 

When we first moved, the then owner of the bar, if asked what time it was (a frequent question when time has lost its meaning), would point languidly to the clock on the wall at the far end of the counter on which were inscribed the French words, “C’est l’heure”. But on Wednesday, with the sun beating down, the pair who now run the place were too busy shuffling between the bar proper and the adjacent tabac section to engage in even wordless badinage. 

Having downed our cafés-cremes, we said our goodbyes and made our way to the English Shop, where Paul, the proprietor, was waiting. 

Paul is a good-natured fellow. An ex-soldier, turned chef, butcher and épicier, he has an immune system severely weakened by leukaemia, and even after most pandemic requirements were ended, anyone entering his shop was asked to disinfect their hands and to wear a mask. 

As you would expect, everyone was happy to oblige. Everyone, that is, except an anonymous complainant who told the gendarmerie that his human rights had been infringed. As a result, Paul was ordered to serve customers whether or not they chose to wear a mask. When he explained his medical condition, he was told that if he wasn’t well enough to run his business, he should maybe shut up shop and retire.

The irony, he explained to me, was that for the previous two years, gendarmes would check on an almost daily basis to see to it that he and his customers were complying with strict mask regulations. He would often observe an officer with his nose pressed up against the window. Had he broken the law, they would have come down on him like a ton of bricks. Now, they won’t even permit him to fix a notice on his front door “requesting” that customers help keep him safe from infection by volunteering to wear a mask. 

Sometimes in France, La Marseillaise rings very hollow indeed. 

A common sight in rural Brittany — once the epicentre of French cyclisme — is old men in lycra. They charge through the countryside on their well-oiled machines with a sense of entitlement that, with French law and tradition heavily in their favour, not even the most tight-arsed gendarme would dare to question. 

I came across two examples of the breed —­ the Spandex Brothers — the other day while having lunch in a bar in a neighbouring French town. Aged, I would say, in their late sixties, they were balding and distinctly grey around the gills, but with muscles still toned by their daily exertions in the saddle. One sported figure-hugging electric-blue lycra. He looked like he was auditioning for a geriatric revival of the 1980s show, Gladiators. His mate, who could have stepped out of a Manga comic, was a study in lime-green. Both wore heavily padded shorts. 

Maybe it’s just me (it’s not), but I am put off by such shows of late-onset masculinity masquerading as strength. I picture them at night, asking young women if they’d like to feel their muscles. Why can’t they be like me, with an electric bike that spends most of its time in the basement while its well-oiled owner puts his feet up?