Perdre la tête

Last Saturday I went to the English language library in Nice. The woman working at the desk offered me an invitation to the opening of a photography exposition, so of course I took it. The event took place this evening, so when I had finished my last lesson of the day, I took off for the gallery where I met Jube.

I really enjoyed the exposition, which was made up of black and white photographs around the theme "perdre la tête," or "losing your mind (head)." There were photos of people whose heads were hidden by objects, people making crazy faces, photos commemorating the bicentennial of the beheading of Louis XVI, and some that looked as though the head had been removed from the negative.

The librarian who gave me the ticket had described the event this way: "There will be a lot of niçois and there will probably be a speech by some politicians, and afterwards there might even be a little buffet!"

As soon as we arrived, I sniffed out the buffet, but of course we had to wait for the speeches first. We checked out the photos in the meantime, and when we were called for the speech, we met one of Jube's colleagues, the librarian at his high school. What a character! He looked like the drawings of the devil, with a pointy beard and mustache, and one of the first things he said was, "Isn't this a nice gallery? It's even better because there's a buffet!" I certainly wasn't going to say it, but I agreed wholeheartedly.

After the speeches, including one by the photographer (which was, of course, more interesting than the speech from the Minister of Culture), the hoity toity art crowd threw themselves at the buffet. Made up mostly of older women and chic middle-aged couples, they stationed themselves in front of the buffet tables and snarfled down the petits fours. Lucifer had managed to sneak to the front of the room during the speech, so he had already eaten a few hors d'oeuvres. Jube and I hovered on the outside of the crowd, unsure of how to push our way to the table and missing out on the treats! Lucifer felt sorry for me, so he snuck back up to the table and handed me some food. He also got me a small cup of champagne--"Real champagne!" he bragged.

I had a fun time, and realized that cultural events, and the people that attend them, aren't always as classy as you think they are--although Lucifer managed to pull off Class with a capital C. (Well, if anyone could, it would be him, n'est-ce pas?)