“It feels good to party, after all this Covid”, smiles Céline, glasses with strawberry-shaped glasses on her eyes, her hair full of confetti. His daughter rushed against the railings, to see as close as possible Pétassou, the ragman of the carnival of Périgueux, judged and burned as it should be this Sunday March 20 on the quays of the Isle. Between 4,000 and 5,000 people attended the carnival, according to the town hall: “We almost have more fun than the children! We have known that before, she is too small, but we have known the party, and then this period of nothing, it really feels good to have the party again”.
“Is there someone in it, in Pétassou?”, asks a worried little girl. On the platform, the children of the Calendreta school have put on their costumes of judges, doctors, soldiers, to judge the man of cardboard and rag. Of course, he is blamed for all the ills of winter, but also, pell-mell, the coronavirus, the masks, “no more restaurants, no more movies”, and then also global warming, the war in Ukraine, and even the defeat of the Bergerac football club in the French football cup. The judgment is rendered: guilty and of course, condemned to be burned in a public square.
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The costumes are out in the crowd that marched from Cours Tourny. Asterix and Obelix, lots of princesses, a few superheroes. The parents are filming, the children are shouting. We feel that everyone is waiting for the moment of the firing, that everyone needs this expiatory moment. It’s done, the children cheer when the head falls: “He was ugly too!” Square in the spring.
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