As if the drumming, marching, cheering and clinking of glasses isn’t enough... the cacophony will reach a crescendo with a superb firework display followed by a relaxing dance under the stars and tilleul trees.

One of the nicest things about this part of France is that everybody kisses one another... generally four times, twice on each cheek, though only twice if one is more reserved or elderly. Men who are family or very close friends will also kiss - as my father did being of eastern European stock - but in the street shaking hands is de rigeur. Walking past without shaking hands with the menfolk every day will make you the subject of gossip almost as much as if you had had an affair with one of their wives or daughters! But that little inconvenience rarely happens here... my theories are that a) the practice of kissing in public dispels the need - or the urge - to lust after the opposite sex... and b) the summer heat drains one’s body, and ardour, of most of its determination.

As to the image of the procession marching up the Grande Rue... unseen in the image above, but the bleu, blanc et rouge of the tricolour were being paraded, the colours symbolising the nobility, the clergy and the people. However, I shot the scene in black-and-white because there was little light... just a few shops spilling illumination through their windows from inside, and the flambeaux. Shot with a Leica M3 and a standard 5cm lens - in monochrome it reminds me more so of having been there. Perhaps I made ten exposures of around one quarter to a full second, panning with the movement of the people’s procession more accurately with the Leica rangefinder than I could have done with any single lens reflex where the long exposure would have blacked-out the viewfinder for the duration of the long exposures... meaning I would have been shooting blind. But it hardly matters... there’s enough to be learnt from one photojournalist’s anecdotal response to the usually inappropriate question of what exposure would one use... the answer, stated much more truthfully than any technical recommendation was, “f/8 and be there!”