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In Which The Zavatta Mystery Is Cleared Up
August 22, 2007 by Mike
Saint Michel Chef Chef
A morning of rain, and video editing. (Results to follow, if I can get iMovie to work ever again. A curse on this modern technological world of ours.)
An afternoon at the circus. Yes! I found another circus - another Zavatta circus, of course. This one is the 'Achille Zavatta Circus.' Achille being the legendary clown who founded this great circus family. Right? Wrong. This Achille is his son - the the circus I saw is actually the Cirque Achille Zavatta fils.
Or, to be pedantic (and accurate) 'The Falck Family presents Cirque Achille Zavatta fils'.
Achille, fils, never even turns up: he stays in Paris counting his money -- if I heard correctly from my source inside the circus. Leaving the Falck family to do everything from acrobatics to elephant riding to white tiger training to selling the candyfloss during the interval and showing punters to their seats. Members of the Falck family probably put up the posters in very town too.
The Falck sons look like Emilio Estevez. Confusingly, their father looks less like Martin Sheen than Super Mario.
I also learn that (the original) Achille had a bit of an eye for the ladies: three wives, innumerable kids. Who rent or lend their names out to circuses around the country. I'm starting to understand...
Comparisons with the Stephan Zavatta circus are redundant: the shows are almost identical without any help from me. The white tigers do identical turns, the clown does identical tricks, the elephants pull identical poses.
Still, it was a way of passing the time. St Michel Chef Chef has been a bit of a let-down. Great name, isn't it? Derived from Saint-Michel du Chevecier Chef, a local bigwig, I am told. But the reality is less appealing. It's partly to do with the weather, I grant you. (Rain, cloud, cold. This is August!) And partly do do with the fact that it's August : the end of this month sees France go back to work, and school soon, leaving holiday homes here locked up. St Michel Chef Chef is closing down -- for the winter! -- in frot of my eyes.
The irony being, when I was in a place like Calais, shops and businesses were closed so the owners could be in places like this. Now I'm here, they've all gone home. A boy could get a complex.
Worse: by pressing on here because of the funny name, I missed La Baule, about ten miles up the road, which is eaither the Longest Sandy Beach In Europe, or the Best Beach In Europe, depending on which blurb you choose to read. Eaither way, S-M-C-C isn't going to be stealing its crown any time soon. Not if it keeps raining. (I started typing 'snowing' there.. spooky.)
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