20 September 2020

A couple more Avignon memories ...

 ... have just come back to me.

(1) We were there during a French presidential election, and much enjoyed seeing what was happening, and watching a few things on the TV in our hotel room.

We were particularly diverted by a speech made by one of the candidates, a Mme Segolene Royale. I think she was giving an explanation of the fact that the bloke with whom she was shacked up and who was the father of her children was not her husband. Neatly, she averred that this made her une femme libre pour une France libre.

Even greater diversion was afforded us, back in England, a few weeks later when the man concerned, the midget but perfectly formed Francois Hollande, dumped her.

As, giggling, we remarked to each other, this made her even more libre.

(2) The restaurants.

4 comments:

Ian said...

I may be wrong but wasn't the midget Sarkosi?

Pelerin said...

Fr Hunwicke is correct as Segolene Royale was the partner of Francois Hollande until they went their separate ways.

Banshee said...

Marie-Segolene Royal was defeated by Sarkozy, not romantically dumped. It was Hollande who was her live-in boyfriend and the father of her kids; he allegedly cheated on her with a journalist for a fairly long time, but she allegedly threw him out of the house at the start of her campaign.

TBF, her dad abandoned her family. She ended up suing him to force him to divorce her mom and pay alimony and child support, but that was a bit late because he died of brain cancer right afterward. (Also, most of the kids were adults.)

St. Segolene (July 24), aka Sigolena, Sigoleina, was a 7th century noblewoman who married young, was widowed at 22, became a nun, and became first abbess of the convent she founded in Troclar. She was from Albi in the Pyrenees but from long before the Cathars, which might have been why she got a lot of devotion from French Catholics in the 1200's. Her name might be a form of Sieglinde.

John Patrick said...

The French seem to take this in stride, although I have to say here in America we seem to be shedding our past puritanical tendencies, given that our current President has quite a reputation as a "ladies man" and is now being challenged by a Vice Presidential candidate (who will likely be the President shortly after she is elected if she wins) who owes her entire political career to being the mistress of the (married) California Speaker of the House. Not that I am happy with these circumstances.