Pétanque (bowls) 
‘‘Pétanque owns a specific rythme, even if it’s slow. We drink pensively a glass of pastis, we bend the knees, the bowl goes up in the air with a long trajectory, falls down on the ground and rolls in a gentle screech to the place where it gets immobilized.’’ - Marcel Pagnol
That ball game dates from the higher antiquity but the petanque game appeared in 1907 in La Ciotat thanks to Jules Renoir. Today it’s the popular distraction by excellence. The word pétanque comes from the Provencal ‘ped tanco’ which means feet jointed. The pétanque bowls are made with steel and weigh between 1.4 and 1.8 pounds. Their diameter is from 7.05 to 8 centimeters. The rules are very simple: 3 or 4 players in the middle of a great number of passionate spectators compose the games. The ‘pointeurs’ have to throw their bowls the nearest possible to a little bowl called the ‘cochonet’ whose diameter varies between 1 to 1.4 inches. The ‘tireurs’ has to dislodge the bowls of the other team, striking them with their own bowls. The pétanque is one of the most important social phenomena in the second part of the twentieth century in the domain of sports and leisure in Provence. The pétanque is a game where every one can participate, at each age in conviviality and in good mood, its equipment is cheap and the rules very simple. Beside the motor supply (development of dexterity, precision and coordination), pétanque brings many social supplies because it favors human contacts, abolishing most of the time social barriers. The game prompts the players to give their opinion to appreciate the distance between two bowls giving birth to passionate and noisy discussions.
