Last night (31 December 2016), New Year’s Eve, was rather different from what we expected.  Last summer, i. e., in 2016, my wife and I noticed that the Comité des fêtes de Lagrasse was organizing a Reveillon de la Saint Sylvestre 2016, and the offer was for a five-course meal: foie-gras, monkfish, chicken in a cream sauce, cheese, and dessert.  The cost was €55, or about £47, with wine included, for “repas, animation, et boissons.”  “Animation” seems to mean the same thing that it does in English.  Oh, no, it doesn’t.

In fact, what we got was a disco, with short intervals for food.  The starting time was 9:00, so we had some sparkling wine punch beforehand, where, speaking to other Anglophones, we learned that the festivities last year (the first time) didn’t finish until 5:00 a. m.  We were entertained, if that’s the right word, by some very young girls showing off their dance steps – all very cute, but was it animation?  The first course was served about 11:00, and then there was “dancing” until midnight, with lots of “bonne annees” and the usual handshakes and kisses.  An hour of dancing followed, and the main course was served about 1:30.  By this time there were a lot of very bored-looking people sitting at tables, being polite and wondering what the hell was going on.  By this time, even my wife, who likes to dance was fed up, and we left, getting home to crawl gratefully into bed about 2:00 a. m., skipping the cheese course and dessert, which probably was not served until 3:00.

The “music” was, of course, very loud, so the bored people couldn’t even talk above it, without having to shout – par for the course at a disco, but not a reveillon, which usually means a feast of some sort.  Moreover, in addition to the overamplified muzak (French pop music has to be the worst in the world), there was a pounding, thump, thump, bass noise added to the cacophony, and I could feel the vibrations in my body, particularly around my heart.  The further away I got from it, the better I felt.

Fortunately, the lights dimmed when the disco started (actually, it never stopped, being noticeably in the background while we were eating), so we were able to make a quick getaway, hoping that our absence wouldn’t be too obvious.  I noticed other people doing the same.  Had something like the Trades Description Act been applied to the invitation to this event (which you might still find at http://www.lagrasse.com/actualites-canton-Lagrasse-Aude-694.html), we probably could have asked for a refund.

Many of the people there were clearly over 50, and while many of us gamely tried to dance for a short while to the disco dottiness emanating from the loudspeakers, we were most emphatically not in time or tune with the rhythm, nor capable of expending the energy, or having the requisite muscles, ligaments,  and joints, required to make the appropriate jerks and lunges associated with discos.  What sticks with me most is the helpless sense of boredom, even despair, not to mention bewilderment,  on the faces of the French who had shelled out a large sum for the evening.