What does an Ambassador do during their holidays is probably not a question that keeps many of you awake at night. But, if asked to come up with an answer you might hazard a guess that they spend their time following closely the latest foreign crisis, calculating what it means for the relationship between the UK and their part of the world and staying in touch with the head office just in case. They might spend those long, lazy summer days deepening their knowledge of the country they’re posted to, including reading that rather long history or biography that’s been sitting on their shelf for much too long. Or, this being the digital age, perhaps they’re more likely to spend their time finding out how to use the latest social media tool in order to engage better with their ‘audience’. Well, just in case my boss is reading this, I spent my holidays doing all of these things. And I also built a pitch for pétanque.
Pétanque or boules is, as I’m sure you all know, a French game that involves lobbing balls (the boules) around, trying to get them closer than your opponent to a smaller ball. It sounds simple but is, in fact, fiendishly difficult and involves tactics that are easier to understand and master if you’ve had one or two glasses of pastis (a traditional French aperitif). You can play on pretty much any sand or gravel surface but in the garden of my parents’ home in France there’s only grass so to play pétanque I needed to build a pitch (or ‘terrain’). This involved a lot of digging, the laying of three layers of different types of gravel and sand, using a compactor to get the surface just right, building a surround to hold the thing together and stop the boules bouncing into the neighbouring maize field and negotiating with my teenage kids and their cousins about what time I could wake them to come and help with the hard work. In fact, and if you’re wondering what’s the point of this blog I’m just getting there, it was very much like diplomacy.
To build the relationship with the government and people of the country you’re posted to as a diplomat, you need to build a foundation – the large pebble layer of your pétanque pitch. You then need a firm surface to play on – like the second, much thicker layer of pétanque gravel, this might take a long time to lay and firm up; ideally you’d leave it a while to bind to a perfect texture. Finally you need to perfect the surface – a fine sprinkling of sand on your pétanque pitch – which allows you to achieve your goals.
When playing, just as in pétanque, you should be good-humoured, honest, careful and accurate. Delicacy will almost always produce better results than aggression. Stay focused on your objective. Don’t miss. And perhaps most importantly, make sure your opponent drinks more pastis than you do.