Letter from Binche:A blood orange carries the weight of a fist as it flies through the air. There are scores being hurled: if you catch one, good luck; if one catches you - on the chest or slap-bang on the face, not so good luck. Just try harder to seize the next one. It's the fête des gilles: here they come, hundreds of them, writes John Fleming.
In bright orange outfits embroidered with red lions and other ancient symbols and pure white headdresses, the gangs of men move slowly through their native streets.
Shuffling along the cobblestones in an on-the-spot dance, they prance comically in clogs, driving winter back to its lair, making space for spring. This year in Binche, in Wallonia, the French-speaking part of Belgium south of the capital, it's mardi gras again.
The medieval streets are lined with mesmerised visitors and almost all of the 30,000-odd populace.
Those too old, feeble or ill, or who simply seek a better vantage point, stare down from third- or fourth-floor windows. Every building is prepared to resist attack - chicken wire is stretched and nailed across wooden frames that protect windows, balconies, the pumps of a petrol station, the doorway of a shop.
And the barrage of blood oranges continues, locals leaping for them joyously, some pegging them up in the air again, other depositing them in bags to bring home.
An old man with a beard like a spade has dug his way through the barriers - he's seen 80 annual parades and he starts shuffling, doing the gille dance, twirling his upraised hand. The hunch-backed, fat-bellied gilles (named after a stock character in French farce) seep past him in a cacophony of brass and percussion. A drummer stops pounding and fishes out a hip flask. Wiping his lips, he passes it to the drummer beside him. Between them passes a smile. For they are in the midst of Binche's defining - and Unesco-listed - moment.
Visit the town at any other time - apart from the weeks in the run-up to the three-day carnival - and you'll find a different Binche. Despite its restored ramparts, it feels unfortified without the celebrations. Its impressive square and town hall spire, its twisting alleys and renowned museum of masks all exude a downbeat calm that is partly bucolic and partly economic depression.
While its bars brim with life each weekend, they are rather empty midweek: the townsfolk take the hour-long train ride to work in Brussels or maybe nearby Charleroi or Mons. There's a sense of people just hanging around - waiting perhaps for next year's fête des gilles.
Though once the motor of Belgium's economy - their coalmines were a magnet for Flemish migrants whose names still betray their origins - the town and its region are now hit by unemployment. Trees now grow on the grassed table-top slag heaps that decorate the landscape as strange furniture. The train tracks and canals have been underused since the 1950s as the economic focus shifted north, to the IT and other clean service industries of Dutch-speaking Flanders.
In a neat example of history's march, Binche's gloomy lavoir de charbon (coal refinery) - a magnificently dismal protected structure that has loomed empty and menacing for years on the outskirts - is being transformed into a "modern space". Windows have been punched in its walls: renovated and painted white (like the elephant many believe it to be), it will house offices and an archive. Locals complain about the project's immense cost.
In a country of 10 million, blurred by three linguistic groups (French, Dutch and German), byzantine administrative structures that do not mesh and the inconsistency that has flowed from almost 40 governments since the second World War, Binche has the focus of a clear, local identity.
In Belgium's uneasy quilt of political, regional and mother-tongue factions, Binche knows itself and is fiercely proud. In turn-of-the-century photos that hang in its bars, the gilles pose outside the town's train station, providing evidence of at least one constant since 1549. They have always been there and they always will.
Day in, day out, hand-crafted gille memorabilia - wax masks, miniatures and framed drawings of the beloved figure - are on sale. And whatever the month, as you order a glass of Stella, Maes or Jupiler, or maybe the locally brewed Binchoise beer, get ready for talk to turn to next year's fête.