French Revolutions

reminders of French bitterness at the triumph of English in the battle
of the world languages, advertising campaigns with English slogans — ‘apple — think different’ — followed by
a little asterisk pointing to the indignant, sour-faced translation at the
bottom of the billboard: ‘Pensez différemment’. Even a sizeable proportion of
graffiti is in English, or something like it. Putting ZR to bed in the hotel
garage I’d encountered ‘Fuck off the system’ and ‘Your face, your ass — what is
the different?’
    France had lost the war, but, as the rocket
documentary reminded me, was still fighting rearguard actions in far-flung
theatres. My memory of the Ariane programme is of rockets toppling over on
launch gantries, U-turning into the sea or spectacularly showering a rainforest
with small, hot pieces of titanium after eleven seconds of flight. In this I
was at odds with the programme-makers, who chose to overlook the previous
farces, and indeed the contribution of other nations to what is a European
project, while compiling a trumpetingly propagandist account of France’s
technological majesty.
    It was particularly interesting to
note how local protestors — understandably reluctant to risk their shanty towns
being incinerated by the now-traditional mid-air apocalypse — were portrayed as
brainless Luddites to be cowed into submission by mooring a couple of huge
destroyers just out from the beach. When the control-room whitecoats finally
pressed the button, the booming soundtrack was an orchestral celebration of the
victory of progress over ignorance, the First World over the Third, France iiber alles. It was like watching a James Bond denouement in which Blofeldt wins:
the digital countdown gets to zero, the skies above the secret jungle hideaway
are pierced by a streak of smoking silver, a hundred brainwashed technicians
rise from their monitors in synchronised triumph.
    Inspired partly by this quest for
technical perfection and partly by my own torrid battles against gravity, I was
becoming mildly obsessed with reducing my burden. Toothpaste consumption had
trebled, extruded cavalierly on to brush with a wristy squirt; my hangover that
morning was treated with a paracetamol overdose; complimentary toiletries were
left on hotel-bathroom shelves with a thwarted sigh. I knew all this was silly
— a single discarded copy of procycling would have had far more concrete
significance — but it at least made me feel I was doing something. Just as
well, because my invented itinerary, almost due south on the D704, flung me
directly up a monstrous incline that went on until lunchtime. I’ll say this for
it, though: I didn’t have a hangover by the time I got to the top.
    The landscape was too green, and
there was generally too much of it. In Britain, close-packed herds of livestock
nibble the grass right down to the quick; it was odd to see, through my
drizzle-slitted gaze, a couple of cows marooned in a field the size of Heathrow
Airport, surrounded by so much waist-high pasture that they didn’t know where
to start. And the wildlife hadn’t quite adapted to the intensive nature of
twenty-first-century life either, strutting gaily out of the damp fields into
the path of heavy-goods vehicles. It is a surprising truth that whereas even a
plump hedgehog bestows only a compact visceral legacy on the tarmac, your
average skinny weasel really lets rip. I know this because one of the latter,
carelessly permitting thirty-two tons of mobile machinery to compress it at
speed, ejected a sizeable gobbet of gizzards that flew across the dotted white
line and struck my front wheel, to be distributed piecemeal via the revolving
spokes to my shoe uppers and, less acceptably, my bare shins. I did manage to
eat some lunch, but somehow the usual bacchanalian intensity wasn’t there.
    Clearing myself wearily back into ZR
— a process that was beginning to hold all the physical and mental appeal of
self-crucifixion — I was passed by two old chaps on immaculate road bikes,
gleaming pro-team jerseys pulled tight over their paunches. All their supplies
were in little backpacks; they glanced with disdain at my panniers before
swishing away up the D704.1 knew that two riders relaying — taking it in turns
to bear the brunt of the wind resistance at the front — could go at least 20
per cent faster than a lone cyclist, but being at least 40 per cent younger and
100 per cent less French I rashly decided to give