Cast off the moorings? We took it for granted since his retirement, three years ago now. In fact, after a long career aboard the ship L’Est Républicain (43 years old all the same!), Philippe Delestre still lets his pencil navigate on a daily basis. While maintaining the course that has always been his: tender humor seasoned with a little black pepper.
But with “Encres Marines”, his pencil plunges. In an elegant pirouette, he plunges into the big blue as well as he dawdles on the beaches and lingers here and there in the port where he skims the bars. So many decorations that smell good of iodine, but which he had kept in reserve for a few years already, in the form of 70 ready-to-use drawings. “I had composed them after having released two albums on the War of 14-18. A big desire to take off then caught up with me. But in the meantime, I changed editor. »
However, the newcomer was hardly asked to entrust the helm to Philippe Delestre, Food Editions being established… in Saint-Malo.
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Not the sea leg, but the ocean hand!
That Delestre, Lorrain before the Eternal, does not have particularly sea legs, it is he who says it, and is amused by it. “When I was young, with my brothers, we tried to go boating, but we were definitely very bad. We even almost sank several times. On the other hand, he has the oceanic hand. Confident in appearance, he floats both modest barges and rustic trawlers, and steers with the same ease the yacht swollen with pretension, the speedboat, the Titanic or even the ghost ship…
“In fact, it’s not that difficult to design a boat in general, when you’re from home. It’s all in curves, a boat, completely in the spirit of the Ecole de Nancy! »
For a while, he therefore leaves his Marianne, his generous-throated tramp Prospère Baluchon and his bubbly Parisian retiree, to gently make fun of the captain of the merchant navy, the sandy summer holidaymaker, the clumsy fisherman, the perpetual castaway and even the cook decided to change the lobster from blue to gourmet red.
“And I do not despair, in the future, of organizing a meeting between Raimu from Marseille and an authentic Bigoudène! “, anticipates the freshwater sailor.
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Bilous Submarine and Bilous Shark
On the fauna side, he gives leave to his famous cat Mustache, in favor of a mocking seagull, which returns as a leitmotif like the ladybird of Gotlib or the mouse of Plantu. “In a nod, of course, to the laughing gull of a certain Gaston…”
However, he gives his preference to a massive, big-eyed shark, in an almost erotic drawing (yes!), where we see an impressive whale shark mistaking its female for… a submarine. Mind you, it can happen to the best…especially when navigating troubled waters!
“Encres Marines”, by Philippe Delestre, at Food Editions; 18 €
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