The proprietors of the bar in Montmartre were gregarious, warm, friendly. They made us the best drink of our week in Paris: tequila-based, garnished with a raspberry and a tiny, star-shaped, blue edible flower – I think a butterfly pea flower, but I’m not sure. It was late and dark, and it wasn’t my first drink of the evening. Three sips later, the blue flower sagging on the ice in my glass as if it, too, was out too late, I asked: ‘Mélenchon, Macron or Le Pen?’ The first round of voting in the presidential election was four days away. The friendliest, broadest-shouldered man among them – a moment earlier, the bartender had pointed him out to us as one of the new owners of the place – clenched his fist. ‘None of them! I’m to the right of all of them.’
