Paranoid, moi???

Early 2011 Egypt, and the middle East, were very much in the spotlight; regimes in Tunisia and Egypt were toppled by weeklong demonstrations.
Which makes me think of a story we heard from a guy who lives in La Bergerie, a hamlet not far from here. This guy, C.P., told us that his neighbour was building a pyramid opposite his front door. This all sounded rather strange, and the way he described it pointed at something quite bizarre. According to him, there was a big group of people living opposite his house, most of them lived underground, and they were erecting a pyramid with Egyptian statues at the entrance. There was also talk of red eyes of the statues, which would be lighted up at night. He had complained at the Mairie, but according to the Mayor his neighbours had received planning permission from Mâcon, so there was nothing he could do about it.
Give C.P. his due, he is a juicy story teller, so which part of his story was true, we could not work out. How do you find out? Simple, you just drive past. And so we did.
C.P. had not really exaggerated. Opposite his house there was a former pond, with tapered dikes around it. In the middle of this pond stood a house, and the entrance through the dike which had recently been clad with concrete, seemed to give access to some underground corridor. There were at least 10 cars parked next to the pond. With the story of a big number of people living there in mind, and also considering that C.P. obviously was not on speaking terms with this neighbours any more, we did not really dare to get out of the car and start taking pictures.
However, one sunny afternoon we finally got our act together, plucked up the courage and went off to La Bergerie. Plan of campaign (think Private Eye!): I had my camera with tele-lens ready to roll. We drove to a path from where we could see the house without really being seen, windows rolled down. I got out of the car, found some support against a pole, and shot some pictures. From there we drove off to the front of the house, doing a turning manoeuvre (paranoid, moi?) - implying to those who might think “What are those people doing here?” that we had taken the wrong road - which brought me and my window in a position to take some pictures of entrance and Horus statues at close range.
Operation Moscow Rules went very smoothly, and once home I could have a close look at the pictures I took. Well, I must admit, that I would not be very pleased if someone was building a tourist attraction opposite my front garden.
Now what connections is there with the fall of dictatorial regimes? France has a tradition of giving shelter to ex-dictators (Baby Doc and others), so it would not surprise me if Sarkozy has built this little cosy pyramid for his friend Hosni Mubarak......

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