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ANECDOTES about ELEANOR BERRY by Rozanne Robinson, a freelance jounalist
Gendarmes in Marseilles and a Birthday Shared with Robespierre.
Berry loves Marseilles and sometimes takes holidays there. She also loves to put it in her books. She has been arrested there quite a few times, for relatively minor offences. One arrest was for tu-toyering (means she called him tu instead of vous) a gendarme whom she mistook for another gendarme, she had once been friendly with. Another time, when the worse for wear on Bastille Day, she was done for mimicking the Southern brogue of yet another gendarme. She was arrested two years running for accepting a "dare" and swimming naked from one side of the harbour mouth to the other, when it was dangerously busy.
Perhaps the arrest which distinguished Berry most, was at Marseilles Airport in about 1980. She delivered quite a violent blow across the face of an Algerian woman who was treating a dog with what Berry considered to be extreme cruelty.
Berry was handcuffed and SLUNG down the Gendarmerie where she was asked to fill in a form. While being questioned by the fairly merry gendarmes, who had just had lunch, Berry was pleasant, flirtatious and charming.
When asked to fill in her date of birth, Berry made a point of stating that she shares a birthday with Robespierre.
For some totally unknown reason to Berry, the gendarmes fell about all over their office, having hysterical giggles.
One of them eventually composed himself.
"Madame, you have amused us," he said in French. "Please feel free to go and Bon Voyage. Come and have coffee with us any time you visit our airport."
Since this incident, Berry has frequently expressed the opinion that Robespierre would certainly not have bothered to give backhanders to Algerian women being cruel to their dogs.
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