Yesterday was the first day of the Fair –weekend in la Bourboule. There is a heavy emphasis on stalls for children, with all sorts of games I have never seen before. There is, for example, one where one has to fish for plastic ducks – I would prefer to shoot live ones, but there it is, plastic ducks are a big thing around here.
Then there is the net-curtain labyrinth – small children become entangled in a set of corridors of giant fishnets, to be rescued by assorted accompanying adults after they have cried them selves tired.
There are also shooting galleries, a ghost gallery, and remarkably few food-stalls – in my experience, food-stalls are the main attraction, but in la Bourboule the plastic ducks & co win hands down.
Aside from the ducks, which are small and cute, the Fair features animals which are huge and intimidating, like tigers and gorillas. I looked out for one of the giant dolls which A brought back from la Bourboule, but no luck, she managed to bag the lot, it seems.
I tend not to frequent the sort of stall where you can win, by luck or skill, diverse useless items. If I don’t like the items I could win – or if they are too cumbersome to transport – I don’t try to win them, obviously. If I do like them I usually reckon that it would be cheaper (and faster) to buy them outright. It is a good thing others don’t share my attitude, or half the fairs of the world would close down.
A large food-stall emitted a delicious smell of crepes, but upon closer inspection they appeared to have been made some time ago, so I desisted. However, the smell had rather awakened my latent desire for crepes, so I decided to visit Les Galapagos for the second time that day. They only serve crepes in the afternoon, at lunch time and in the evenings they are busy with other things and crepes are off the menu.
Before diving into my favourite dining haunt I stopped by Remy to check whether the latest Picsou had arrived – it had! Complete with a nasty green squiggly toy attached to the cover. Great!
At Les Galapagos I ordered a crepe with Nutella, in keeping with my reading matter. However, I declined an offer of hot chocolate to go with it and had café au lait, one can push these childhood experiences too far. Several tiny children, who were also eating crepes with their parents, declined my offer of the green squiggly toy, so I attached it to my purse, as a secretly ironic non-homage to certain idiotic women who attach all manner of items (scarves, tags, tiny toys) to their overpriced & overuglied handbags. This morning it grossed out the Hebe at the central drinking fountain at the Grande Therme, so I had to detach it. Nobody got the joke, anyway.
Currently it is sitting next to me on the bed while I am typing these lines, looking slightly worse for wear – these complimentary toys never last long, in my experience, so there is no point in getting attached to them. I am thinking of calling it Zebediah Allnixguts, but it might be a female. I have not been able to discover any sexual characteristics, just a small protrusion which could be a proto-penis. But perhaps it is just a manufacturing defect.
