Ah, la folie d’avril!

Spring blossoms impetuously seem to burst out bubbly like a bottle of champagne on New Year’s Eve. But New Year’s Eve is a distant memory.

I feel a bit like a bubble of rosé and “salirò, salirò, tra le rose di questo giardino”.

You breathe in the streets under the foliage an irreverent madness, the heartbeat is intermittent.

I fall a little in love with everything around me, from my pastel dress to the passerby I passed in the park at six in the afternoon. He was sitting on a beautiful bench.

What a rush it was, damn spring!

It makes me laugh and “I just don’t know why”.

Maybe it’s because the days are getting longer, the aperitifs are multiplying and I’m at N’Ombra de Vin on my fourth glass. “I just don’t know why”, it’s a figure of speech.

How nice it is to make jokes, but it is not always easy to find those who can play along.

Beware of those who don’t understand irony. “Che noia, che barba!” Sandra would say.

The early bird catches the worm, as the saying goes.

Not like you who have caught this April Fools’ Day fish, ordered in its best form, salted, filleted and tasted every last bone.

I hope you are having a laugh, if you are not laughing you can switch the channel.

Do you even know how April Fool’s Day was born?

The hypothesis is confused in the legend as the goldfish in the stagnant water of Guastalla Gardens. 

It is whispered that the first to cleverly create a prank with a poisson theme was the queen of Egypt, Cleopatra.

Cleopatra challenged in a fishing contest the Roman leader Mark Antony, who, to keep up the name of alpha male and escape the humiliation of losing to a woman, asked a slave to secretly insert a fish on his hook. But the Queen of Egypt, having discovered the deception, had a gigantic fake fish covered in crocodile skin attached to the hook, making fun of the leader. How chic!

However, the contemporary tradition of April Fools’ Day began at the end of the 1500s when in Europe King Charles IX decided to adopt the Gregorian calendar.

Until then, New Year’s Day was celebrated between March 25, the old date of the spring equinox, and April 1st, a day dedicated to feasting, libations and banquets.

Then given the bubbly air and the champagne bubble feeling, it could also fit.

Many French, some careless and others opposed to change, continued to celebrate at this time as in the old days.

The others, in order to make fun of them, started to give them absurd or empty gifts, inside of which there was only a little piece of paper with the writing Poisson d’Avril or invitations to non-existent parties.

Yeah, but the name… What does it have to do with fish, you may say? Fish take the bait easily, as the victims of jokes.

Just like you, who have fallen for mine. Excusez-moi.

But are you sure that the invitation was to a non-existent party? Or will it be a joke within a joke?

Maybe there is a rendezvous for real, maybe there is or maybe there isn’t… I promised you rich prizes and cotillions and the gourmode word is always kept.

Bisou

Clara