The Liberation of Opio
When we first arrived here this was a small, sleepy, staggered junction carrying little traffic during the day once the "rush hour" was over. Yes, look at it now, busy, busy, busy...it took me around 5 minutes and 5 shots to take a photo without a car on it with three friends stopping to offer me a lift as I stood there.
If you look very, very closely you can see two engraved rocks on the roundabout. These are plaques commemorating the liberation of Opio by the Allies on the 24th August 1944.
I was chatting to one of the shop owners who's always lived here about the changes she's seen over the years and she described the scenes of joy as the Allies marched in, all on foot she said. She was a child and with her brother and sisters ran down the lane to the road when they heard marching feet. Their father called them back because they could not be sure which army it was but heedless the youngsters ran towards the soldiers who were throwing armloads of chocolate and chewing gum to the crowd that had gathered to welcome them.
Every year there's a ceremony to commemorate the event and to remember those who fell during the fight to liberate Provence. Here is a link to the Mairie web site for anyone wanting to see last year's ceremony.
On another subject: I changed to Beta yesterday and wish I hadn't. My navbar's turned French as have the instructions for commenting. Big Sigh. If any other expat bloggers have had the same problem, I'd love to hear from you...Now I'm off to notify the help group.
6 comments:
Where changing to Beta is concerned, you ain't seen nothing yet, Anglela. Wait till you try using Beta's "user-friendly" system for rearranging the look of your page. You'll find that your labels and hit counter disappear in the process. Sure, there's a "system restore" that puts you back to square 1, but that's hardly the point.
Sarah says she's managed to splice her label/hit counter code into the new template. Clever girl ! But they don't tell one where to insert it into the mass of html babble. I know where I would like to insert it ! To be honest, I think the people who keep inflicting these changes without taking the trouble to plan and explain things properly to non-specialists are a bunch of anally-retentive nerds who might benefit from a lengthy session of colonic irrigation !
PS I notice you have had trouble with placing pictures as well. That's because the draft mode does not make allowance for "About Me" which grabs a third of the page width when you publish, and then does incredibly stupid things with placement of text etc. How can something so elementary be overlooked ? What has happened to the education system in wherever (UK, France, California ?) that this kind of cockup can happen, and remain uncorrected for so long ?
What gorgeous history, I love talking to older people and listening to their stories, the visions i get of these excited kids scurrying for choclate is very sweet.
Shaz :)
P.S Im glad I havent changed I have enough trouble with my normal site. Goodluck
Angela
The NavBar shows up in English on my page and ditto the instructions that go with the comments. I presume, clever lady as always, you've managed to put it right.
Love the bit about trying to take a car free pic and three friends offering you lifts!
Best - Jilly
I don't know if you've managed to change the language of you navbar already. If not, go to the main login page of blogger and at the bottom of the page there's a "language" tab. From there you choose english (and it should then be permanent)
To put in all my bits and pieces, I just copied them en masse from the old html section and pasted them into the new place 'HTLM/Javascript' section. If you don't have it, add it in 'Ajouter un élément à la page'.
I think the view in your photo is beautiful! Thank you for your patience in waiting for the good clear shot. I cannot travel any more and I dearly love looking at the photos of others from all over the world.
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