And so it happened at the Fête de l’Huma, an enormous three-day concert on the outskirts of Paris, held as the annual event of the Communist Party newspaper L’Humanité (if you need your memory jogged, here is my previous account of the event). I had been trying to be the hostess-with-the-mostess, in other words exposing a newly-arrived friend to all that was wonderful about France – which is this case boiled down to a tour of regional alcohols. As the hour approached midnight, we were trying to navigate ourselves to an exit through the colossal La Courneuve site to catch one of the last metros of the evening.

We almost found it, but then a familiar sound hit my ear. It was THAT song. Un petit ricard dans un verre à ballon. And my friend hadn’t sampled Ricard, so she was as yet unaware of the joys of watching that first drop of water launching the Ricard alchemy. We stopped, we had a drink, we pumped our hands in the air at the appropriate times (basically at the end of every line in the chorus), and thus impressed some boys from Dax with our knowledge of south-western French culture. In return, they started the crowdsurfing caterpillar dance for us, and we rode a wave of hands a few times. Upon collapsing into the dust at the end (as the patron of the bar started the same song for the fourth time on repeat), we remembered that we were trying to catch the metro, and with the haste of Cinderella, disappeared into the night.