He looks like a customer desperately looking for a place in a crowded restaurant after helping himself to the buffet and, basically, that’s a bit like it… On the opening day of the Agricultural Show, February 24, Emmanuel Macron has never stopped looking for his place. Where was she? Behind the scenes, with his bodyguard? Into the fray? Behind his security cordon? Alongside farmers and their animals? In his official car? Or just somewhere else? Throughout his thirteen-hour visit, the president never really seemed to find the table to put this damn tray on.
On the tray, the classic mixed assortment. Cheese and charcuterie and the obvious: here, it is the sausage that takes pride of place. The opportunity to recall that this prodigious invention dates back to Antiquity. Mastering the art of pork preservation and salt-based preparations, the Romans developed the first version of sausage, then called botularius, in Latin. The object of all desires in Rome, the sausage later met with similar success in Gaul, where discerning palates enjoyed tasting it with their cervoise. What a time!
If the sausage is of Roman origin, the slices resting on the president’s board are, like the pieces of cheese which keep them company, European. At least that’s what we can deduce from the blue flags with yellow stars stuck in the food. These also allow us to recall that a very first version envisaged for the European flag included fifteen golden stars (like the number of member countries of the Council of Europe at the time), and not twelve. And that its background was blue, but a much lighter azure blue than the one adopted at the end.
Since we are talking about the European Union, let us continue by noting that Emmanuel Macron wore that day, with his usual white shirt and his eternal navy suit, a tie made from silk grenadine. Why such a name ? Quite simply because it is in the region of Granada, in Spain, that this textured material was invented in the Middle Ages… But, today, it is in Italy, in the region of Como, that the know-how in Silk grenadine material and the machines to weave it are now found exclusively.
Finally, how can we not notice that one of the presidential security men, on the right, behind Emmanuel Macron, is wearing a thick turtleneck sweater under a suit jacket, the incongruous clothing combination that is perpetuated from generation to generation while almost guaranteed to be too hot, too tight and look old? Obviously, the gentleman likes risk. Almost as much as this president looking for his place in a hostile Agricultural Show.
