On est en Finale

Right you see this. Now imagine its night time and the fountain is lit from behind as landmarks are nowadays. Now you see those two bottom tiers imagine that is full of people jumping up and down and getting very wet. Oh and the left hand corner, someone’s waving a huge red flare there, bathing the whole scene in its scarlet glow. The semi circular base of the statue, oh yeah there are a whole bunch of people there doing a fair impression of the cancan although it seems the aim is to kick as much water out of the fountain rather than showing us their knickers. And there’s a fair amount of French flags waving off that bit. And on the fallen angel, yep there are a bunch of people clinging on there and jumping around. And there are a bunch of boxer shorted young men riding the dragons, redirecting the jets of water flowing out of the dragon’s mouth over the milling crowd.

Now imagine the sound. Firecrackers going off, horns beeping and every now and again the crowds start chanting as one: “On est en finale, on est en finale, on est, on est, on est en finale.”

But hang on who’s that there behind the fallen angel’s wing. He’s trying to clamber up higher but keeps slipping down.

“Shit, he’s going to fall and break his head.” Colleen says.

“No, he’s going to get to the top and wave the flag off. See it’s easy, if he climbs on the fallen angels wing, then hitches up on St. Michel’s skirty thing and then...” And then I get a bit stuck, but I want him to do it.

And he wants to do it too. He kicks off his shoes and clambers up the fallen angel’s wing. Then he ducks behind and he’s up St. Michel’s back like a little monkey and then he’s on St. Michel’s left shoulder clinging to his head like a little boy on his Dad’s back and then he unfurls the flag and I hoot and scream and clap for him and a general cheer goes up.

Later when the one who scaled St. Michel is down and the flag that got nicked off the front of an official building is up we decide it’s time to leave.

“It looks like it’s raining over that metro entrance.” I point out.

“Ach.” Colleen replies.

We get down about four steps before they notice us and they kick and they kick and we scream and giggle and Colleen looks at me with her few drops on her t-shirt and says. “Ah you must have got the brunt of that.”

I turn round, I’m drenched!