Lot Blog 2

Quercy Passions, a relatively new addition to the magazine scene in south-west France, has been researching the events of May 68 (which actually stretched well into June) in Quercy and the Lot, and which appear to have been notable by their absence, at least in the early days. As the capital erupted in riots and strikes the first real action in the Lot was on May 14th when hospital staff went on strike - for three hours. By the 19th the national train strike was biting locally and things gathered pace a bit with the PTT and others joining in. But by June 7th two trains a day were operating from Cahors, Gourdon and Souillac and things were slowly returning to normal.

I happened to find myself in Paris during the évenements of May 68, taking a weekend break from exams and the serious work of protesting the Vietnam War. It was to be a determinedly hedonistic weekend, but as we munched our way through the six courses of our pre-departure lunch, resolutely trying to ignore the distant sounds of shouting in the streets, we were finally moved to action by waves of students rushing into the restaurant to leaflet our fellow diners.

Giving up on the lunch we descended the stairs in search of the protest, unaware at that stage of its magnitude, only to find things peculiarly quiet. We had a rendezvous with a coach - to take us to a small airport on the Normandy coast and thus by propeller plane across the channel - somewhere around République.

Arriving at the métro, however, we were waved away. Everything was closed. Managing to find the last available taxi in Paris, whose driver explained the situation and expressed grave doubts about us reaching our destination, either coach or plane (the airports were now closed too, apparently), we took a right hand turn into a boulevard, cobblestones, to our astonishment, piled up alongside the street, to be met with a surging mass of people advancing upon us, stretched out across the width of the boulevard, arms linked, shouting "CRS SS".

"Merde" said the driver in tones of awe and fear, reversing with such speed back round the corner, that we nearly shot through the windscreen. It suddenly felt impossibly bourgeois - and a little dangerous - to be in a taxi at all and it was with some relief at being able to preserve what was left of our Leftist credentials, that we got out when the driver told us the journey was impossible.

We joined the march for a while - aware of a kind of edgy menace to it that seemed quite different to the Vietnam ones in London - before realising that we were stranded without any money. The taxi had used up the last few francs.

I'm afraid the revolution and our rent-a-mob capabilities were temporarily forgotten.

The rest of the day was spent walking to the American and British embassies (my boyfriend was American) to try and borrow some money for the extra night or two we would have to spend in Paris. It was a city in turmoil and chaos that met our eyes as we walked across it. No transport of any kind, the streets thronging with people, rushing hither and yon in a desperate attempt to find a way home, groups of Parisians arguing politics, students leafleting, the distant noise of demonstrators, private cars hooting at the pedestrians milling over the streets, an air of expectancy and slight fear hovering over the proceedings.

At the British embassy - the Americans, who were to have their own problems that year, refused help to their Latino citizen - I wrote my last cheque and prayed it wouldn't bounce.

It was, of course, an adoptive Lotois who was largely responsible for the peaceful resolution of the '68 uprising. Georges Pompidou's strategy, for good or ill, was to split the solidarity between the students and the workers, by negotiation with the trades unions. A year later, Pompidou was in power and the little town of Cajarc on the Lot/Aveyron border, was put on the map as the holiday haunt of a President and earned its sobriquet "la deuxième capitale de la France".

Pompidou was introduced to the area by Françoise Sagan's sister, so it is appropriate perhaps that this summer of 2008, the 40th anniversary of the May uprising, belongs apparently to Françoise Sagan, or so says Le Figaro. And indeed there has been a rush of revived interest in the author, whose dog reputedly overdosed from sniffing her handkerchiefs, according to an interesting article by French correspondent Angelique Chrisafis in The Guardian.

Apart from a new biography by Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, Sagan: A toute allure, a memoir by a former lover Annick Geille, a film biopic and the re-issuing of many of her books, there is also talk of a possible Hollywood version of her famous first novel Bonjour Tristesse.

Quercy Passions has also jumped on the bandwagon, indeed was one of the first to lead the way, with a long article in the April-May edition reminiscing on her friend Sagan by Eve Flavin.

Sagan was the hedonistic wild child from the Lot who, long before Pompidou, introduced many of her friends to the département. You can visit her grave in the walled cemetery of Seuzac (see p.162 of my book) near Cajarc.

Lelièvre cites Sagan's passion for the causse:

"Les Causses pour moi, c'est la chaleur torride, le desert, des kilomètres et des kilomètres de collines ou seuls émerges encore des hameaux que la soif a vidés…c'est l'impression fantastique, rassurante que la France est vide."

Exactly.

Speaking of drugged-up dogs there was great excitement in Gourdon on May 20th when a home owner spotted a curious animal skulking in the bushes of his garden. It identified itself as a wallaby when it hopped onto the lawn. As one might expect in France the Office National de la Chasse et de la Faune Sauvage (note how the two are inextricably linked) were soon on the spot and the animal was captured. Don't be surprised if wallaby steaks start appearing on menus shortly.

Marc Baldy, the President of the CDT who kindly threw a press reception for the launch of the book is something of a mover and shaker in Lot politics (and indeed national ones too) and has a blog of his own, the Political Bistro. Anyone who wants to keep up to speed with politics in the département should take look. Baldy is well connected and the swipes he takes at Sarko are amusing.

If you associate T E Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia, only with David Lean and the desert, think again. In 1908, aged 20 and a student at Jesus College, Oxford, Lawrence was to be found pedalling around France on his bicycle, according to Guy Penaud in Dire Lot. The journey, the point of which was to discover mediaeval castles and fortifications, was one of several undertaken by Lawrence, and covered an amazing 4,000 kilometres in 54 days, two of which were spent in Cahors, where he was much impressed by the "curious rather than beautiful" Pont Valentré, but less keen on the mosquitoes, wrapping his head in a towel to escape them. From Cahors he cycled west down the Lot valley through Luzech and on to Fumel in Lot et Garonne, passing the ruins of Bonaguil on the way.