Leap year

Click here to see today's Google doodle, presenting a bunny leaping into the final day of February 2016.

Come on ladies, let's knock him out!

There’s a delightful story in yesterday’s newspapers about a criminal who couldn’t prevent his holdup in a boutique in Rennes (Brittany) from getting totally screwed up… by a few courageous female shoppers.

Towards the end of the afternoon, a heavily-built bandit dropped in to the shop Ombre des Marques in the Boulevard de la Liberté, and yelled out that he wanted to take their drawer full of cash, otherwise he would shoot everybody. Since the staff refused to obey this threat, the fellow stepped behind the counter and grabbed a heavy drawer containing the day's earnings. Meanwhile, a dozen female customers observed the surprising events unfolding in front of their eyes. One of them decided spontaneously to intervene. She cried out to the others: "Come on ladies, let's knock him out!" So, they jumped upon the big fellow, knocking him to the floor, and simply sat on him. The silly fellow was so busy holding on to the drawer of money that he couldn't even reach for the alleged weapon hidden (?) in his pocket.

Police arrived rapidly on the scene, where they admired the weighty work performed by the ladies.

A detective explained: "When we entered the shop, we saw that the bandit was stretched out on the floor, held down by the weight of the women. They're exceptionally brave ladies, because they didn't know whether or not the fellow was really armed."

The detectives congratulated the women, and set off to the police station with the captured bandit.

Best beaches in the world

Click here to access a lengthy and well-illustrated article in Britain"s Guardian newspaper on the top 50 beaches in the world. The list includes four French sites.

French site — Pyla dune, an hour's drive from Bordeaux

This huge sand dune is 2,7 km long, over a hundred metres in height, and a few hundred metres in width. The dune is located on the shores of the Atlantic, while its landward side looks out over a vast forest. This ancient dune is in perpetual but gentle movement, of an imperceptible kind.

French site — Morgat, Crozon peninsula, Brittany

French site — Bora Bora, French Polynesia

In my native land, Australia, the list includes a single beach: neither Bondi, Yamba nor Byron Bay. That absence doesn't surprise me, as I've never been impressed by Aussie beaches. I've found them hugely overrated, often boring and ugly, never poetic... but possibly dangerous.

French president visits the agricultural show

Click here to see a one-minute video of the rowdy visit of president François Hollande to France's annual agricultural show in Paris.

A few fellows actually vandalized the government's agricultural stand.

The idiots durely didn't realize that acts of that senseless nature are unlikely to win them supporters. On the contrary...

Buying a beach in New Zealand

This splendid beach named Awaroa is located in the Abel Tasman national park at the upper tip of the south island of New Zealand. This remote paradise of 7 hectares, 10 km from the closest village and only accessible by boat or helicopter, was up for sale for a few million dollars.

Last Xmas day, a New Zealand pastor named Duane Major decided to tackle the challenge by a crowd-sourcing approach. He rapidly received 40,000 pledges, amounting to 2.3 million dollars. Even the New Zealand government participated in the project, with a gift of 350,000 dollars. The pledges were even accompanied by poems from children, praising the beauty of the site.

That's the same nation whose citizens were most upset when France was testing nuclear weapons in that part of the world... before blowing up a Green Peace vessel in Auckland. Retrospectively, I have the impression that French authorities didn't really understand the kind of citizens with whom they were dealing.

David Cameron is truly a pommy a-hole

The more I see and hear David Cameron, the more I'm inclined to designate him by means of the nasty old-fashioned Aussie slang term "pommy". There's no doubt about it, Cameron is indeed a perfect pommy specimen.

He has just produced a pure specimen of prickish pommy behavior in an allusion to Jeremy Corbyn.

“I know what my mother would say. I think she’d look across the dispatch box and she’d say: ‘Put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem’.”