L'haussement

L'haussement, or the shrug, more particularly the Gallic shrug. I'd been aware of the expressionful shoulder movement long before David Ginola first turned out in Toon colours, but that man was a master, especially when combined with a doleful look in the direction of l'arbitre. That raising of the shoulder, when rendered correctly by a true member of the French race, can convey just the right je ne sais quoi that says 'Eet waz not ma fault yoo now, eet waz eem, whay are yoo steel eer, pleez go away now yoo annoy me.'

Anyway, a trip today to a supremely massive Celtic Gaul site, Bibracte, atop Mont Beuvray and a rather excellent museum to go with it. After the museum we wandered a kilometre up the hill to the gateway to the site proper, and Mel and I started looking in different directions. With me well known on here for a fair few bird photos, and with different species on view here than in the UK, I was staring into the trees looking for oiseaux that refused to appear; while Mel wandered into the beautiful beech forest on a fungus hunt, finding some great varieties that remained unidentified and so uneaten.

On dismounting the hill we made for the Bibracte restaurant, which promised Gaulois food (there was a thought for a moment that all the food would therefore be smoked, but it appeared to be that some of the food, like the bread, simply had 'gaulois' listed after the name). The girl behind the counter, issuing un haussement des epaules, informed me that there was no food, only drinks, they weren't supposed to be open that day, and they were only serving food to groups who had booked ahead and were already sat at the tables. The perfect place for a Gallic shrug.

The day topped off with a run round some hairpinny roads to viewpoints over Autun (after visiting the Roman theatre in the town); and then a brilliant spin along a Route Forestiere, quite literally a forest track, to a monument to the resistance fighters who hid in the Morvan forest here from May 1944. Proof positive that the French do not deserve their reputation as white flag waving cheese eating surrender monkeys, but instead have earned their right to shrug.