A couple of weeks ago I was waiting in the car in the village for Síle to get some bread at the Boulanger.

In the Place de la Marie there are the usual threatening group of French adolescents , doing wheelies on miniature bicycles , running their scooters at each other and yelling at each other loudly (and to me ) agressively.

Then I noticed this wimpish young boy enter the Place from the opposite corner , about eleven years old and obviously – from the basket he was carrying-on the way to the Boulanger for Maman.
My heart sank.
He was certainly going to have to run the gauntlet.

Au Contraire.

He walked up to the first teenager, the one on the bicycle, and lifted up his face to be kissed, the cyclist bent down and kissed him , thus the young lad proceeded through the place, being kissed or shaking hands as he went.