The Times
Having a boule - Where better to study a game than its birthplace? Mike Gerrard goes to Provence to learn pétanque.
I am following in famous footsteps. The film star Yves Montand and Prince Aly Khan are just two of the celebrities who have played pétanque on the village pitch outside the Café de la Place in St Paul de Vence in Provence.
Montand played on the pétanque pitch almost every day when he wasn't away filming. He also introduced his famous friends to the game, which was invented in 1907 in the village of La Ciotat outside Marseilles, farther along the coast. Some say it happened in 1910, but why wait three years to celebrate a centenary?
Rudy Gross, a Bavarian who has lived in St Paul for 30 years, tells me the story as we start my pétanque lesson. "There was a man in La Ciotat named Jules le Noir," the affable Rudy tells me, "who loved to play boules, but was becoming crippled by rheumatism. He was no longer able to run up and throw the ball so he asked if he could sit on a chair and throw from there, and his friends agreed. But they said that they should all play the same way, without moving their feet, and that is how the game began."
The name pétanque comes from the Provençal words ped tanco or pieds tanqués in French, meaning having your feet stuck to the ground. Because there is no run-up, the pitch is shorter than in other boules games. These days pétanque is played by about 17 million people in France and in more than 50 other countries.
But Provence is the home of pétanque, and when I saw that my Hotel, the St Paul, was offering pétanque lessons, I jumped at the chance. I met Rudy outside the Café de la Place at 9.30am, when there were no crowds to see my goofs.
The game starts with the little pig, the cochonnet, a small wooden jack. The first player scrapes a circle in the earth with his foot and stands in it to throw the cochonnet. All throwing is underarm, and the little pig shouldend up 6-10m (20-30ft) away. The same player then throws the first boule, to get as close to it as possible. Rudy showed me how, and his boule rolled over the rough ground and stopped a few inches from the jack. I noticed that he had put hardly any effort into throwing the steel ball, so neither did I. My boule made it barely halfway to the jack.
In pétanque this means I throw again, until one of my three boules is closer to the jack than Rudy's. or until, more likely, I run out of boules. I slowly got used to the weight of the boules and the bumpy pitch. I had one moment of glory when Rudy landed the jack in a rut, and I managed to get all my boules within a foot of it. Victory to l'Anglaise at last - albeit short-lived, as Rudy won every other game and was the first to 13 points, which is the end of the match.
At least I didn't have to kiss Fanny. If you lose 13-0 at pétanque you have to kiss the bottom of a woman named Fanny. As there's usually no such-named person around willing to be kissed, most teams have a carving or drawing near by, and Rudy showed me Fanny's pink ceramic cheeks behind some curtains on a wall in the Café de la Place.
A few days later we went to near by Cagnes sur Mer, where we had arranged for an English-speaking guide to show us around the Renoir Museum. This was the artist's home for the last years of his life. Photographs in the museum show that his hands were twisted and gnarled, and his brushes had to be strapped to them so he could continue to paint. By 1912 he was confined to a wheelchair, which sits today in front of his easel.
It was a tear-jerking tribute. Our guide, Jean Marc NikolaÏ, had a passion for Renoir, and for pétanque. When I mentioned my lesson, he drove us to the pitch in the medieval town of Cagnes sur Mer to play. As we walked back to Jean Marc's car we met a man who looked familiar, but I didn't know why. He was carrying a set of boules and heading for the pitch. "This man is a friend of mine and a very good pétanque player," Jean Marc said, and introduced us. His name was Jacques Renoir. As we walked on, I asked Jean Marc about the man's surname. "Oh, yes," he said. "He is Renoir's great-grandson."
Need to know
Mike Gerrard stayed at Le St Paul, where two nights' B&B, including dinner at the Michelin-starred hotel restaurant, cost from £446pp with Luxury Explorer (020 83392121, www.luxuryexplorer.com), which can also arrange a pétanque lesson (about £15pp extra) with Rudy Gross. EasyJet (www.easyjet.com) flies to Nice from £36.36 return. More information www.britishpetanque.org
