The National Day parade in Corbie was everything one would expect from the sort of small town where everyone is someone else's cousin.
There was no mass display of national defence, no tanks rolling through the streets, in fact there was no seething throng of people being held back by the crowd barriers either. Instead the town’s fire brigade brought up the rear of the rag-tag little parade with both of it’s units. A dozen boy scouts, a few volunteer fire fighters, three gendarmes and a city band which might very well have been inspired by the Keystone Cops enthusiastically provided the marching tunes in such a way that everyone in the parade could be confident of being in step with at least one instrument.
We gathered at the memorial for a wreath laying ceremony which might have been a trailer for a Pink Panther remake. Dignitaries in their tricolour sashes and funny hats watched solemnly, old soldiers formed an honour guard and the band failed to perform one of those marching manoeuvres where columns are supposed to turn back on themselves, instead falling about in little bunches of arms, legs, instruments and giggles, giving us perhaps a more potent symbol of our times than all that had gone before.
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