As the second half began, Dora fell asleep with her head resting on Vanessa’s lap. She always does that when she’s bored. She opened one eye when we shouted Penalty! And the other eye two minutes later, after Kylian Mbappé’s feat (we can no longer call it a goal). She opened her eyes wide to watch the rest, no longer recognizing the France team that she had left adrift, zombiesque, on neuroleptics. As we know today, the Kremlin secret services had poured bromide into the magic potion that Didi, our beloved druid, ritually distributes to his players, except for Kylian who, as everyone knows, is not entitled to it. , having fallen into it when he was little.
At the end of regulation time, at 3 everywhere, Laurent opened the champagne. A presentiment that we would never open it otherwise. And in fact, we left without having finished the bottle. As there were no taxis in this far end of Montrouge, we decided to walk home, but it was raining, freezing rain, Qatari temperatures. The RATP website announced the passage of the 68 at 7:07 p.m., we hurried to reach the Verdier-Guillot stop where another disappointed French couple had been waiting for the same bus for a quarter of an hour already. At 7:10 p.m., no 68. The RATP website now announced the next passage at 7:23 p.m. And at 7:25 p.m., without having seen a single bus pass, the site indicated the next passage at 7:40 p.m. OK, I said, they take us for idiots.
There, miraculously, the couple from Montrougiens who were waiting for the bus invited us to get into their car. Because they had a car! They lived there, in the building at the entrance of which we had all taken shelter from the cold rain, just opposite the bus stop. Familiars of 68, they had preferred to take this bus to go to dinner in Paris, to avoid traffic jams on Sunday evening. The bad evening, what. But in misfortune, what kindness! We went down with them to the second basement of the parking lot, where, in an American thriller, the guy takes out his box cutter to slit our throats and strip us of our credit cards.
“Did you watch the game?” Dora asked them, just to get to know each other. “Yes,” said the husband. And me, to make myself interesting: “In the art of missing penos, we are the world champions, huh!”. It didn’t make them laugh much. They dropped us at Porte d’Orléans where we were able to catch a metro train overrun with young supporters made up with three lines of the colors of France, but who were making blue, white and red tears on their adolescent cheeks.
Everything was out of whack in this evening: no one to gag the unbearable presidential bard who, descended into the locker room after the defeat, believed to comfort our defeated Gauls with his logorrhea as hollow as soothing. Where had our blacksmith gone, the precious Cetautomatix (“No, you won’t sing! No, you won’t sing!”)? Has the passage of Jean-Yves Ferri to Fabcaro already caused discord in the village?
All of France would have liked to take Mbappé in its arms, but all of France knows how to behave and respect the pain, loneliness and dignity of our idol. What disrespect! What misappropriation!
I was so sickened when I got home that I stuffed myself the last three episodes of the series Harry and Meghan on Netflix. Dora had warmly and imperiously recommended her to me. We know the ties that attach him to the royal family.
After spending almost six hours in front of this aristocratic pensum, I wondered what a royal family could still be used for today, if not to produce series almost as disappointing as a final of the 2022 Football World Cup. in Qatar.