The good thing about France, other than the women, the food and the sunshine, is that it takes your mind wonderfully off all the awful things happening in the world. I read the Times but its not the same as when at home when all the horrors seem to be a constant. Over here they’re more fleeting, more peripheral to what we’re going to eat next, to what flavour croissant we’re going to get in the morning. And for a while, just a short while, you can forget about ISIS, you can ignore the Ukraine, you can stop worrying whether George Galloway will make a full recovery from his beating (yeah; really worried about that one), and you can even, almost, for just a second, forget that Spurs lost to Liverpool. Again.

But unlike murders, beheadings, military invasions and the beating up of rancid Scottish tossers who should indeed be beaten often and severely, the Spurs thing just keeps coming back to haunt me. Not losing a match, that’s nothing. But its symbolic. Symptomatic of a regular malaise. That we are capable of great football, of super wins, but continue to struggle against top teams. Thus being condemned to finishing 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, depending on how many teams happen to be ‘top’ in any given season. And the rot started Sunday, in our third game (not counting the Europa games; no-one counts the Europa games).

So to avoid the horrible thoughts we went to Sete, a gorgeous little fishing village perched on the Med with a canal running through the middle, famous for its oyster beds (I never knew oysters slept) and, believe it or not, fish.

But being a European place it has to have a bizarre claim to fame. Its the law. In Pamplona grown men run around naked (well, real men would, bloody Spanish tarts) with raging bulls. In Italy somewhere they have a massed tomato fights involving thousands of people. In parts of Croatia on the sixth sunday after the winter solstice they (probably) round up the pregnant goats and all the men called Jeorg and… well, whatever.

In Sete they joust. Like, mediaeval type Knight’s Tale kind of jousting?? Oh, that’s nice and normal. Except they do it on the water. Oh. Don’t the horses drown? Well they probably would, so instead they use boats on the back of which are raised platforms upon which the jousters stand with their poles poised. In the literal sense, not the metaphorical. That would be rude. Even for the French.

Hence the splendid statue of the pole-holder given pride of place by the jousting site where this event takes place every year before crowds of more than 25 people.

I love a Euro-quirk, I hate football.

Happy tuesday,

A xxxx