COLUMN
Woody’s worries
It’s game on at Ruth Wood’s holiday home in Brittany
T
his sounds smug, but after seven years of owning a holiday home in central
Brittany, I know the region pretty well. I know my crêpes from my galettes, my kouign- amann from my kig-ha-farz, my menhirs from my dolmens and my biniou from my Bugul Noz. But just when I thought I’d become a Brittany buff , something hit me for six. And seven, eight, nine. It all started when my dad
saw a poster advertising a local event last summer. “Jeu de palets,” he read out loud. “What’s that?” Everyone turned to me.
“Uh… some kind of game involving… uh… biscuits?” I guessed, thinking of those round buttery Breton biscuits called ‘palets’. At this our teenage daughter Mabel perked up: “Biscuits?” “Well, there’s only one way to fi nd out,” said my husband Jon. Later that day, we drove to a
nearby park where hundreds of people had assembled to play the game. There was a festive atmosphere, with a bar, food tents, even a juggler. Beneath a line of trees, clusters of men and women (though mostly men) were throwing small metal discs onto wooden boards laid fl at on the grass. It looked like a cross between boules and shuffl eboard. “Clomp! Clomp! Clink! Thwik!” went the discs as they landed fl at on the boards, struck other discs or clipped the board and wheeled off into the grass. “Oooof!” and “Ohhh!” roared the players with disappointment or delight. In the thick of it was one
of our neighbours, a trim silver-haired retired councillor
Jeu de palets is a popular game in Brittany 106 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: March/April 2023
called Bertrand. He looked so engrossed in his game that I didn’t want to disturb him. But the next morning, I saw him tending his veg patch and plucked up the courage to ask. “Ah oui,” he pronounced.
“Jeu de palets. It’s a very popular game in Brittany.” “Really?” I replied. “I’ve never seen it before.” Bertrand stared. To him that must have been like a lifelong visitor to Somerset admitting he’d never seen a skittle alley. “Ah bon?” Taking pity on us, he agreed
to initiate us in the sport. So, that evening, he and his wife Clara turned up in our garden with a planche (a 70x70cm
board made of poplar wood), a box of palets (12 cast-iron pucks) and a tape measure. Having laid the board on a fl attish piece of lawn, Bernard measured a distance of 2.8m from the edge to our starting line. Meanwhile, Clara handed out the palets, which were numbered and fi t pleasingly in the palm of your hand. There was also a smaller puck called ‘le maître’ or ‘le petit’ which acted like the jack in boules. Bertrand threw this onto the board fi rst and explained that we had to get our palets as close to the petit as possible. “Like this,” he said. With
a subtle fl ick of the wrist, he let loose a puck, which sailed smoothly through the air and landed on the board next to the petit with a satisfying ‘clomp’. It looked easy enough so I
launched my own. It overshot the board and landed with a thud on the bald patch of grass over the septic tank. Bernard puff ed his cheeks to hide a grin. Following me, Jon, Dad
and Mabel had equally bad beginner’s bad luck. Then it was Clara’s go. “Clink!” went her puck, landing directly on top of the petit. Wow!
“Beneath some trees, men and women were throwing small metal discs onto wooden boards laid fl at on the grass”
The next time, I was
determined not to make a fool of myself. After absorbing much advice on how to hold the puck correctly and how to loosen it with just enough force that it stayed fl at and lost power gradually, like a fl ying saucer coming in to land on a planetary surface, I made my second attempt. The puck fl ip- fl opped through the air, pinged off the corner of the board and rolled into the corner of the garden. Through the fence, Youki, the Vietnamese pot- bellied pig, eyed it hopefully. Oof! I clearly had a lot to
learn. About jeu de palets, about aerodynamics and about Brittany. We practised the game every day for the rest of the holiday. Of course, now that we know what it is, we see the signs everywhere. Beaten- up boards propped up against bars. Posters in boulangerie windows promoting the next tournament. Boxes of palets in the supermarket, not just of the buttery biscuit variety. Jon bought a box and fashioned a board out of an old shelf so that he could practise the game back home in UK suburbia. “Oi!” I shout through the
window whenever I hear the familiar “clomp, clomp, thwick, ping, thud” coming from the garden. “Keep the noise down! What will the neighbours think?” I can’t let him get too
much better than me. It’s just not cricket. ■
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