I climbed up a tall pine to watch the clouds. It was life away from the neighborhood”

“In this photo, I must be 8 or 9 years old. I lived in Evry, with my mother, in a complicated environment: social misery, anxiety-provoking climate, a little criminogenic. Besides, there was nothing to do in my city. It was boredom. My mother sent me on vacation to her sisters. I have very fond memories of it. These moments made me sensitive to the sweetness, to the good things in life. I found another way of living there, with less adversity. There weren’t only harsh things in Evry, but when they were, it was really dark. And then there was also the kind of virility contest between guys from the neighborhood. Even as a child, you are imbued with it. You already have friends who hang out in the street from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m. during the summer, left to their own devices or with a big brother who vaguely watches.

At my aunts’, I could be myself, make myself a hot chocolate. I spent the summer holidays with them. And those of winter in the house of my grandparents, in Gruny, a small Picardy village surrounded by beet fields. I loved going there. I was playing in the garden, in the adjoining orchard of a large field, with cows. With my cousin, we gave them grass, we played to see if the fence wires were electrified. Does it work with a stick, a piece of plastic, a finger… Worse, we put a firecracker in the dung. I experimented the countryside: I climbed in the trees, I climbed to the top of a big pine to look at the clouds. That was life away from the neighborhood.

Between Sète and Touraine

My aunt Bernadette lived in an apartment in Villeneuve-d’Ascq. With my uncle, they were teachers in college and in a vocational school. They were leftist intellectuals who read Telerama and listened to classical music. They were always refined in their references, without being pretentious. With Bernadette and their daughter, my cousin, they came to pick me up in a 4L in Evry and we went down on vacation to Sète, with my uncle Michel’s family. On the way, we listened to baroque music. The communist grandfather listened to Léo Ferré, Ferrat, Brassens.

And me, I was the little half-breed in the middle of it all. I felt good, I was protected, loved, and I was shown it. The other month of summer, I spent it in Touraine, at Christiane’s, I had my friends there, my lover. I was cycling with my uncle in the fields. These holidays were miraculous. They gave me another point of view, a counterweight. They allowed me to see that we could grow up differently elsewhere. Without them, I would have had the same reading grid as my neighborhood friends. »