Presidential visit (contains saucisson)

He came, he saw, he speeched and he promptly flew off again.

But he remembered to leave the cheese and wine and saucisson and macarons behind him, so all in all, a terrific presidential visit!

It started with a rather long queue of patient endimanchés. It looks like there is more than a couple of expatriate charcuterie aficionados in Dublin. Little did they know how much their patience would be put to the test.

Security was extremely tight.

Both of them.

After a cursory glance at bags and umbrellas, the enjeudillés were finally let loose in Dublin Castle.

And the long wait began.

A long, hot, sweaty wait.

It was announced that the President would be delayed by 40 minutes. Yeah roight. He was in fact delayed by 90 minutes. It is rumoured that Michael D. Higgins insisted on having a game of Uno in Áras an Uterus. That went on and on. While the French charcuterie-loving population of Dublin was sweating away the long minutes.

And finally he arrived. And he did his speech. And not a bad one at that, with some actual content (I always thought that the resident speech writers took July and August off and that some young guy on a job experience scheme was used for the duration of the summer -well, he’s good). And everyone sang la Marseillaise. Well, some did. And the lyrics seemed even more inappropriate than usual. There is no impure blood soaking our fields.  But there is some innocent blood of unfortunate families drying on la Promenade des Anglais…

And finally, the moment we had all waited for: the crowd split in two.

Those who queued to have their photograph taken with Le President.

And those who raided the buffet.

The absence of a selfie from yours truly with a civil servant en bout de course shows unequivocally which side I chose.

It’s been an interesting experience.

Time to head back to work.