Love in the time of Corona is 1.5 to 2 metres apart. It is spending weeks without a hug or a kiss. It is masked, gloved and sanitised. It is a being held by a body electronic, a phone, computer, mobile, WhatsApp, Zoom, Facebook, web of care. It is letting go, stamping down on worry and pervasive uncertainty. It is playing music, writing, cooking, dancing, on one's own and for one's own. It is digging deep into one's resourcefulness and motivation. It is understanding the fish in the bowl. It is food deposited at the door of an old age pensioner. It is not falling prey to drama but striving at levity. it is avoiding the hype and not watching the news. It is celebrating nurses, sudden heroes and heroines of these times, who usually toil in poorly paid obscurity. It is dying in solitude, away from those you love... It is cold rooms vacated to store corpses while the most beautiful spring ever is blooming. It is removed, autistic, bizarre, the stuff of South American literature, magical realism of a nightmarish kind.
Paris like I have never seen it. This is week one into lockdown and just a 30 minutes coach ride from Charles de Gaulle airport to the centre through empty roads in the cold morning sun. I was away 12 days in Indonesia and I don't recognise this city. When we are dropped at Montparnasse station at 8h30 am, there are only 3 winos on the pavement hurling abuse at our small group of bleary, bewildered travellers. The air is fresh and clean. The streets are eerily deserted, a latent threat hangs in the stillness, Sergio Leone's western style. I almost expect to see tumbleweeds rolling down the avenue du Maine. Even if I hadn't been travelling for 30 hours and were not so jet-lagged, I would find it difficult to hold on to reality. This is how it must feel before aliens land.
Ducks in front of the Comédie Française Montmartre, la place du Tertre
Security guards roam the lofty station. Those 'Men in Black' are not cool. Trains sit idle on tracks and today's departures fit on one single board. Mine is at 3pm. The waiting room is not heated and, though I am wearing all my Indonesian layers, I'm shivering. My warm clothes are at my sister's in this city but, because I have travelled, I am a potential danger and unable to go to her's. Everything is closed. No coffee is to be had. No croissants. No sandwiches. No toilets. What are we then? Pure spirits? Not humans any more? Not needing to use the loo while waiting 6 hours for one's train? Humph... I ask a group of policemen checking 'derogations' and identity cards. Keen to get rid of my indignant self, they don't ask for any paperwork (this is a technique I highly recommend) and I escape outside hoping for the Nirvana but... cafés, restaurants, shops, are all shuttered. Rows of still, anonymous facades stare at me in silence. No hustle and bustle, banter, rants, shouts and laughter. No delivery carts and vans blocking the traffic. No wafting of the usual Parisian cocktail of fumes, crusty bread and cigarette smoke.
A kind lady, the only one out, on her way to her job in a kiosque à Journaux (newspaper booth) and amused she hasn't yet been forbidden to work, points me towards well hidden, clean-ish public toilets and to an open boulangerie that also sells cappuccinos, sandwiches, yogurt, fruit and salads, bless them and bless her. A good tip which I will share with fellow sufferers, waiting with me that day in the fridge. We're all on our way home. The only way allowed.
Zingara, Phil's yacht in Camaret, a small harbour at the very west of western France, is my legal address in this country. Phil is in Britain and the boat is empty so I can head there and hunker down for my quarantine. After dropping my suitcase, I wander to the supermarket where I purchase food for 2 weeks, just in case I have caught the damn thing and have to remain isolated. In the small, familiar cabin, I feel cozy and safe but I research the emergency phone numbers, just in case and... I finally collapse.
Home : Zingara
Sunday breakfast in the cockpit
Still waters at the pontoons
A few days will be enough to recover from jet-lag but the shock of that sci-fi homecoming is still with me, weeks later, faded in the background, lurking in the dead of night, when I'm startled into wakefulness with a sting in the heart, gulping a big lungful of air as if I had been underwater. A sharp shift of focus is needed and I don't know how to go about it. It was good to be footloose and so I have been for almost 3 years. In this new reality, it is not a lifestyle I can pursue. Were it not for finding shelter on the boat and were it not for Dominique, a friendly local man who owns an empty flat, I would be without a base and could well have become a danger to myself and others. I am worried about the money I had been living on. We might be facing 2 years of slow or no growth. I discover my state (French/English) pension will be a pittance. It does take a conscious effort to live in the present, only in the present and set restless fretting aside. I am floating rudderless, waiting for a direction to present itself. This pandemic is the sort of event that brings to light what is not solved, at a personal and global level. A Karmic wake-up call. I, we, will have to be creative, inventive, find a new paradigm and refuse to compromise with what is unacceptable.
Sunrise from the flat's window
Spring in the streets of Camaret. Lemons and wisteria.
Terraces are closed but still laid out as a morale booster
with a special brand of Breton humour.
Conspiracy theories appear in the social media.with a special brand of Breton humour.
This is all just a fascist, right-wing, capitalist take-over, to keep the population cowering and rake in all the money.
This being said, as a side-effect, it has stamped on the social unrest very efficiently in France and, for the first time since 1890 (except during WW2), there are no May 1st demonstrations on the street. Only remains the fragrant token of good luck you give to those you love, a sprig of lily of the valley.
Something else I have seen on FB : Wuhan is the first Chinese 5G city, so that's why the Covid-19....
What to believe? Something does not feel right at all, that's for sure... Pr Dolores Cahill, a world-wide renowned expert, shakes and rattles mainstream news in this hour long interview. According to her, social distancing and lockdown are of no use. According to her, it would take 800 years for a virus to mutate from bats to humans... According to her, there is scientific proof that Covid 2, for instance, shows mutations that cannot be explained as natural mutations. Anyway, better for you to listen to her rather than read my secondhand, non-expert summary of her interview. But, for everything she says, I have heard the exact opposite being decreed and asserted. Tiresome.
All of a sudden, there are no more homeless people on the street in French cities. Why was it so difficult to find accommodation for them before, I'm asking you, when it can be solved so quickly?
And why are there no masks available in France? The government declares that they are not useful, anyway. If you can't provide, denigrate. They will not appear on a grand scale until May11th, 2 weeks ago, as I write.
Trump is cutting funding to the WHO... He recommends injecting disinfectant... I can only shake my head in astonished disbelief. Callousness? Stupidity? Both?
Bojo has been released from intensive care, praising the foreign nurses that brought him back from 'death's doors', those still left in the UK after the Brexit culling, I guess.
Macron announces a relaxing of lockdown in France after May 11th. Until then, no one is to leave their home but for one hour walk and no further than a 1km radius or for purchasing every day essentials. A signed paper has to be produced, were we to be checked by the police or the gendarmes. Fines are hefty. In Camaret, beaches are forbidden and so are the coastal paths. Parks and public gardens are closed. Sailors can't sail and gaze longingly at the harbour entrance, at the distant horizon as inaccessible as the tip of the Annapurna.
Or as inaccessible as a good hairdresser. My henna is fading and threaded with grey and my last (stylish) San Sebastian haircut is a long distant memory. I hear grey is trendy. How dull...
Ha! First world concerns! We have a roof over our heads (even if it's tiny) clean water to drink, food on the table and competent healthcare.
Still... cabin fever, on a scale never reached before, settles in.
A golden web of care is woven. A web of kindness, a flurry of messages, emails, of aid, of videos, of ecstatic dance music and African Zumba, of jokes and swapping recipes, of feeling held, linked, connected, helped. Friends, family, who have been popping in and out during these strange and fraught times, thank you!
It is business as usual for my lovely daughter Gwendoline in Hongkong, only a WhatsApp call away. Restaurants and shops are open. Friends can be visited, social life continues. Masks are compulsory. She hikes on the steep hillsides in the damp heat of the spring. Lockdown on a wider scale. 8 million people held within their borders. She posts masks to her French family, with loving notes (and extra pressies for me) and organises a fund-raising Zoom 'pub' quiz that gathers friends and family from Hongkong, Singapore, Bangkok, London, Southwell and... Camaret. All to sweeten the time away.
Phil caught one of the last Eurostars back from Britain and spends his quarantine in Dominique's flat overlooking the harbour. Every day, we walk and chat for the prescribed hour. There is no little lane that we haven't trodden, no little fold of land, no ripple of light on the sea, no birdsong, no moorland blooms, no granite archway, no orchard blossoms that haven't been commented upon with delight. When the rain doesn't fall and the wind doesn't howl, this here is one jewel of a place.
On a 1km radius walk
...and this one is amber...
Christopher, in Australia, reaches out from his Alice Springs home, wondering how my itchy feet are faring in these stultifying times. 'Suffering is for-getting the purpose' he says. While the Australian crowd is sipping cool beers or gin and tonics and I am tackling a breakfast bowl of milky coffee, he plays for us meditation pieces he composed on the classical guitar. We listen in rapt silence. A little Zoom miracle.
His company, Italk studios, produces teaching material through videos and stories. The UN has contacted creators around the world to provide information about the pandemic. I write to Benedetta in Italy, Franzi in Germany, Randi in Indonesia who can translate the resources in their language... and I do the French version.
Everywhere, life is put on hold. Everything, everyone is suspended in time and space.
It's always the wrong time for a pandemic but life does play extra tricks.
Dear friends in Aberdeen, Scotland, were just about ready to move from their home when lockdown starts, their life already in crates.
In Paris, my sister Catherine, had barely started resuming work after months of being homebound when her employer, the Beaubourg centre library, sends her back to her flat for teleworking. She survives on a steady diet of detective stories and TV series. We swap tips to fill in the extended leisure but even a bookworm like her finds it long-winded.
My old school friend Brigitte, also in Paris, has just had her first grandchild, whom she can't visit and takes care of her mother whose home help can't come any more. We touch base regularly on the phone and she remains cheerful and caring through it all.
Sometimes, one finds oneself at the front row. The pandemic tips over the edge those who already live in poverty.
Cia in Nepal, witnesses how cases shoot up as soon as the country relaxes lockdown. She works hard raising funds for dhal and rice. In Lombok, Invest Islands organises distribution of food parcels.
Here is the fund-raising link below...
https://fundrazr.com/61epM8?ref=sh_88yQAf_ab_2boFK6UUitd2boFK6UUitd
https://m.facebook.com/WhiteGrain/?tsid=0.07768903423965767&source=result
Gwendoline's godmother, a psychoanalyst and psychiatrist in Spain, explores the intensity of online consultation. There is plenty of room on the bus and the train to reach the hospital through San Sebastian's empty streets. The queue in front of the baker's in the old town is a good rendez-vous spot to meet family. We share many stimulating WhatsApp calls rich in ideas and laughter.
and the one for Nepal...
https://m.facebook.com/WhiteGrain/?tsid=0.07768903423965767&source=result
Helen, a GP in Canberra, Australia, is asked to work on the phone. For her husband David, a surgeon, consultations at a distance are not so easy. A steady flow of pictures and news fly between us through the ether. Below is a cartoon from the Sydney Morning Herald that had me chuckling for the whole of Easter day.
As soon as the lockdown is announced, those townies in France who have a second home leave in a hurry. Not everybody is so lucky and, in Paris, my brother, Thierry, a musician, goes round in circles in his one bedroom flat. Because of flu symptoms, he isn't able to budge for 2 weeks. It still remains a mystery which virus it was. Even playing the violin lacks appeal. We haven't chatted so much since we were teenagers and it gets philosophical. Yes, living in a big city is only worth its cultural and entertainment appeal. The enforced idleness reveals an intense nostalgia for nature.
and how lucky I am to be here...
In the Alps, Pierre has seen wolves on his daily walks and wild mountain goats have been roaming the empty streets of Chamonix.
Nick and Zena, in Wensleydale, England, are surrounded by fields, streams and woods, their beautiful B and B empty of guests.
Jacky is also closed for business in his pilgrim hostel near Figeac. He's never done so much gardening and his plot has never looked so beautiful. We meet for online aperitives (I favour kir with strawberry or peach liquor. He has a good supply of excellent whites in his cellar) and chat about his paintings, the old stone houses for sale in his area and how devilish English pronunciation can be.
My cousin Marie-Hélène in Dinan, near St Malo, France, is the busy creator of an organic market gardening rehabilitation project. If she gets the right authorization, I will be able to do some volunteering for her. Watch that space...
Neil and Jonnie in County Cork, Ireland, enjoy a rural lockdown, gardening and helping with meals on wheels. There is no doubt wonderful fragrances continue to waft from their kitchen and good cheer is to be had in their Baltimore home.
Andrea in New Zealand and I touch base, keep friendship alive and well. She is a hard-working gardening goddess and I imagine that, between her chickens, orchard and vegetable plot, she'll be well on her way to feed the whole neighbourhood.
Have you noticed how the necessity to maintain social distancing contaminates interaction? Suddenly people avoid looking at you as they give you a wide berth in the town's alleyways. Suddenly, there are no more 'bonjour!' or 'Belle journée aujourd'hui!'. Suddenly, we forget to smile. I realise I am holding my breath when another customer crosses my path too closely in the aisles of the SuperU.
Camaret port de plaisance du Notic
But, at the marina, camaraderie prevails. We're 4 live-aboards at the port de plaisance du Notic and are privileged that we have to pop out and walk the pontoons to reach the shower block and the bins. And I'll be damned if I'll take my paperwork for that. There is a constant back and forth traffic, peppered with kind words, witty comments, offering of dishes...
To break the tedium, Pâris uses his dinghy and small outboard engine to get to shore. His name comes from the 'selfish chap who eloped with Helen, thus causing the war of Troy', he explains to me. He wears it with equanimity. When the lockdown started, he was just about ready to sail to the Glenan to embark on a diver training. Just over 20 years old, he is champing at the bit and whiles the time away with arcane boat repairs and fantastic world music.
One sunny afternoon, I notice Jacques sitting on a bollard, strange flat sausages dangling on a string from his fingers. Fish eggs! He is in cahoots with Jean-Claude (forager-in-chief and possessed of a smutty sense of humour) who's been catching the mullets that come in thick shoals in the harbour, in total disregard of the bright red and white sign forbidding fishing from the pontoons. The cops have other fish to fry these days, erm... Anyway, Jacques marinated the eggs in salt and, even cut waferthin on a slice of baguette, they are very potent.
Harbour mullets aplenty
Jacques and his dog, Bandit
Last Friday, May 8th, the Chambre des députés (French parliament) voted the extension of the 'Etat d'urgence sanitaire' until July 10th. Lockdown is relaxing but, for the moment, people still have to stay in their departments (counties) and not travel further than 100 km from home. What about those who are separated by these exceptional circumstances and are not married or in a civil partnership? It was debated whether to allow the reunion of lovers beyond travel restrictions. The 'Lovers' amendment' was rejected by the Minister for Health but he thanked the instigator of the proposal for this 'tender moment'.
Oh the pleasure of striding out on the coastal paths, now allowed, to stunning beaches, now allowed, further than the 1km radius, now allowed and enjoy the spring's first swim, cold and fabulous in transparent waters. Families picnic on the sand, sailors are back in the marina, wielding power tools, lugging sails and fenders, refitting and scrubbing hulls. Friends gather in cockpits with apéritives, nibbles and salads. Visitors saunter along the quay. Youngsters whir on mopeds. There is a buzz. You need to wait now for crossing the road. Cars are back...
This is comfort of a paradoxical sort. Yes, life is starting again and about time too, but the eyes blink painfully in the light after weeks spent in the dungeon. The busy-ness will take some getting used to.
Here is an extract from a song my friend Stefan wrote:
This lockdown love's a marathon race
Like trying to clamber into outer space
Your mellow voice still means so much
But it is wrong to want to feel your touch
I just can't stand it one more day
Your crying eyes are a thousand kisses away
One thousand kisses away.
Love in the time of Corona.
Note: the pictures of Paris are from the media, except the first one.
Note: you spotted the reference to Gabriel Garcia Marquez' book : Love in the Time of Cholera.
