...and the marble was released with pent-up energy, and the spring snapped uncoiled from its Covid, masked box, and I bounced like a grinning devil against the confines of my country (with one 'ping' across the Spanish border) and I landed on a little balcony in Figeac, south western France.
In front of me are tiled roofs, oak beams grey and wrinkled with age, strong as concrete, wonky stone and brick walls. Pigeons fly their ungainly flight, clouds of starlings whistle and warble, swallows swoop. This here is one of those areas where rain is welcome, not the kind of place where you spy yet another threatening shower and sigh and roll your eyes like it's another dad's joke.
Today, fat drops drenched the last hour of the market, the porcini from the forest, the slabs of cheese from the slopes of the Auvergne volcanoes, the mounds of melons from the river banks, the tomatoes coeur de boeuf from organic gardens. Thunder hums, grumbles, roars, lightning slashes the lead above and buckets of water chase away the stickiness. A breeze wafts, spiked with ozone. Soon, the sun will be back, the street fete will start and kids will be running and playing skittles, dogs will be milling about, tail wagging, mothers will be dancing with their babies to a Brazilian band, couples will jive, others will be smiling to a singer hand-cranking a street organ, 'oh la la la, c'est magnifique', Champagne will be tasted, crepes will be tossed and we will vote on the best jam.
So, I sit on the balcony of the small flat I rent in Figeac's medieval centre. I sip a kir and reflect on the last months since we all finally could walk further than one km radius around one's home. Were it not for lockdown and for the shocking realisation that it might be wise to have a base again, were it not for the Camino de Santiago and for falling in love with Figeac and the surrounding area, I wouldn't be here on this balcony, savouring my favourite poison. I would be in Indonesia, or in Australia, New Zealand. I would be considering ...erm...Mexico? I would enjoy my daughter's company in Hongkong. I would be pin-balling on a grand scale. I wouldn't be scared out of my nomadic soul. Damn... I wouldn't be discovering that growing roots again, physical roots, I mean, is much more time and energy consuming than wandering. I would have written this blog at leat a month ago. I wouldn't be letting the home-lover side of me surface back. Not so soon!!
The first dash for freedom is, at first, a series of hesitant steps, a small rodent emerging, bleary, fur crumpled, legs cramped, after a long reclusion of forced interiority, still shy of the fox, the eagle, the owl, the gun. Really? 100km?And 53 nautical miles possible too? Coastal paths free? Golden beaches allowed? The sea, oh so inviting, so clear, so clean, so cold it tickles, after months of non intrusion. The hiking paths around Camaret, Finistere, western Brittany, are invaded with flowers, the sun beats on us, the wind is soft. Spring has never been soeautiful. The joy is simple and essential. It feels like the world is new again. We should do this every year. Give the earth a break. Give ourselves a break. Not produce, not consume, just be. I am sure not everybody will agree.
Families picnic on the sand, youngsters whir on mopeds, visitors saunter on the quay, you have to look before crossing the road. Friends share aperitifs and meals in cockpits. Laughter is again in the air. 'Bon appetit' I say when walking past on the pontoons of the Camaret marina. 'Santé!' Glasses are raised. Busyness clangs and echoes, sailors clean their hulls, coil their ropes, unfurl their sails, tinker in their engines, check their instruments with joyful eagerness.
Phil, adamant that I haven't really experienced the joys of sailing yet, takes me round the south coast of the peninsula for my first 'ping!' since landing back from Indonesia. The coast is dramatic, plunging into jade, lapis lazuli, cobalt depths. Maritime pines cling at odd angles on the terracotta granite, waves sculpted caves and arches. In the hammock, stretched on deck, I rock and read comics. We swim, explore, delight in simple food, protected from the heatwave by the shade of the cockpit tent. One evening, as the sun sets amber and gold, the notes of old jazz classics spiral live from another yacht, overflowing with youngsters, soft sax and trumpet, 'Summertime' ricochetting on the swell.
This is when Brittany becomes like the Mediterranean, l'île Vierge, Morgat, Crozon, Postolonnec, when it rewards the patient souls that endured its bleak winters. Now, this is for sure the sort of sailing I could get used to.
In June, the month of my birthday, the first cherries were ripe. They hung from the tree like rubies in my parents' garden. We made jam, school was soon over, there was the anticipation of freedom from overcrowded classrooms and the drone of teachers. Last year, I was in Bali and it was steeped in the magic of this blessed island of volcanoes' summits lost in the haze, of altars and offerings, of incense wafting over rivers rushing in deep gorges, rainbows arcing in the waterfalls, of turquoise butterflies the size of my hand. This year, it has the magic of friendship, a three-fold celebration, the first, the joy of a meal out with Phil on the very day restaurants open again, the popping of a Champagne cork, oysters the essence of the sea.
The small rodent ventures further, legs nimble, beady eyes shining. Trains are running, there are no kilometre restrictions anymore. Ping! Marie-Hélène and Didier catch me in Dinan, another medieval city inland from St Malo.
The idea was to help Marie-Hélène in her organic market-gardening business. We share a meal in the convivial garden and I spend a morning weeding and planting in a warm drizzle. Their four daughters converge from all corners of France with husband and partner. The fizzy, the serene, the attentive and the quirky. The joy of togetherness is palpable.
I am treated with flowers on mother's day. On birthday number 2, not one but two cakes appear on the table and they forget one candle, hurrah! We sing songs accompanied by my new travel guitar, a present to myself. It has a beautiful sound for its size and can be dismantled to cabin-size, not that there is any realistic hope of continent-hopping anytime soon. In spite of the driving rain, it is sunny inside.
We've had our fill of walks, the cap Frehel, for once on a calm sunny day, Fort La latte, l'île des Hebihens, along the river Rance snaking from the harbour to Lehon and up and down cobbled streets, windowsills spilling with flowers.
When I was little, I dearly wished to have a birthday to myself. I had to share it with my sister and she, with me. Born on the same day, a year apart, as different as two sisters can be and good friends, we often happened to offer each other the same presents for our special day. The year I gave her a swatch (I lived in Switzerland), she gave me a clock but the most memorable is the time when we sent each other through the post a video of the same River Dance show.
Ping! Paris is alive again with people sitting on every bit of grass and chatting in the shade, reading on benches, picnicking, rollerblading, walking hand in hand. My sister has a friend who is rich of a garden, a rare thing in that city. We gather there for birthday meal number 3. Thierry, my brother, looks like he's spent months in a cellar, now pinching himself, unable to quite believe he's outside relaxing under a tree. Catherine and I blow our candles. She will forever be a year younger than me.
I jump on a train to visit my old friends Virgile and Lucinda, north of Paris, the first time in many years. We met, 41 years ago (gosh), in dramatic circumstances. My then boy-friend had been 'stopped' by the police during a demonstration. They badly beat him up and threw him into a police van. Virgile, an architecture student, had climbed after him to take his address. He had seen it all. He would be a witness. And a godsend he was as Pierrot, a sweet idealist soul who wouldn't swat a fly, was wrongly accused of hitting a cop and spent 3 months in preventive detention to be finally released. He never recovered his psychological balance after that. Lucinda is from Northern Ireland and her blond hair used to be so long it gave her headaches. I remember their flat was the only place with cheddar on the table, which she bought at M&S Opera. Within the alternative crowd I was hanging out with, they were the only friends I knew who were married. What a very bizarre thing to do, I thought then...
Today, there is Champagne, again, jokes, laughter and reminiscence, the glow of a good friendship.
But I am on a mission. Ping! An old stone country house is waiting to be found, in or near Figeac. Incurably optimistic, I am sure it will be the matter of a week (maybe two, in my more pessimistic moments) and that I will find much, much better than a ruin for my budget. Jacky catches me at his pilgrim hostel, closed because of the virus and, in case I had forgotten what it is like to be in France, there is a succession of convivial meals, barbecues, cheerful toasting of excellent wines from his cellar as friends come and go, as the sun vanishes behind a patchwork of fields in an opal sky, as insects buzz around the fairy lights and the lime tree releases its heady fragrance.
I shall not be distracted from my mission and I pinball, ping! ping! ping! ping! back and forth, accompanied by patient estate agents. The machine speeds up, the points add up, I will score big. The first time I walked through this area, I was enchanted. From this tower, Rapunzel let her hair down. Sleeping Beauty woke up behind those crenelated ramparts. This fireplace, of ox-roasting size, saw Cinderalla try on her missing shoe. Pointy tiled roofs top dovecotes. Castles, mansions, farms and manors sprout from alder, oak and ash woods, the sandstone the shade of spring honey. Rivers, lined with poplars, sing in valleys between cliffs peppered with caves, already inhabited millennia ago, where horses and mammoths gallop on the walls. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to feel this is a land of legends.
Reality check. Old houses are vast. No, thank you, I am not planning to organise summer camps. Ceilings are low, windows do not let in much light. This one has a titchy garden because it is in the centre of a village. That one is completely isolated and has thousands of square metres of fallow land, a forest and an orchard big enough to open a jam factory. No, I don't need a crumbling bread-oven and two ruined outbuilding and I don't need this old barn either, gorgeous as it is. It requires years of work. Life's too short. This small manor in the valley is beautifully done up, but too expensive and faces north. It won't see the sun for 3 months in winter. That country home is in the flood plain. This one shouldn't really be for sale unless one is keen on lost causes. This one has a beautiful view but the renovation has erased the wonky, magic patina of old. At night, I toss and turn. Decision, decision...
This is exhausting. Enough. I need a break. Ping!!
In November 2017, along the Camino de Santiago, on the day I had resumed walking after a 10 day break, I had met Charlotte in a Spanish albergue bulging with pilgrims. After almost 30 kilometres and no available accommodation, my legs felt like jelly and my feet weighed tons. She invited me to share a meal with their little group and there started the sort of instant, true camino friendship. A young lady of unfailing no nonsense commitment, she had shaved her hair for the journey. She is blessed with a peaceful, generous soul.
We stayed in touch and now, after 3 years, we are able to meet again, in the Lozere 'departement', over an hour north of Figeac, further from the madding crowd there is not, the most empty area in the whole of France. We cook, sing, swim in a forgotten river, at the foot of a rocky path through dense forest.
The flat is fragrant with drying herbs and foraged fruit. Strange concoctions age in bottles. Books pile in corners. The little group she shares dreams with are gathering in the village that weekend. They plan to start a commune really close to... Figeac, as it turns out. We laugh at the twists of fate, curious to see where it will lead.
Our talks meander between the I Ching, astrology, philosophy, destiny, not unlike the passionate discussions I had in my 20s with friends in smoky cafés and tiny bedsits. They are a rare mixture : an open, non-judgemental, idealistic, intellectual lot with a strong practical sense in their hands. For the first time since I returned to France, I feel completely at home in my country. Yes, I can find here a community of spirit. They don't know it but they help me land back in my shoes.
After a few train connections, I get off in a subdued San Sebastian, well, as subdued as a Spanish city can be. Ping! My old friend Idoia deplores the absence of fiestas and festivals, feels she has lost her bearings without the traditional rhythm of summer celebrations.
Still, we meet friends and relatives in bars, delight in countless pinxos and potes (tapas and drinks), the light local white wine, the txakoli, poured with dexterity from high up into tumblers, like it should be. The damn virus has struck, masks are mandatory everywhere except on the beach, the crowds more fluid, less heaving than usual. No matter, we have plenty to share and a lot of catch up to do. Long swims in the warm waters of the bay, playing in the waves, a trip west to a stunning bit of coast, chatting along the waterfront, quiet evenings listening to music, watching a grim and gripping New Zealand detective series. I recognise the area around Queenstown and I am seized by an intense nostalgia.
But, there is no choice, distant destinations are not on the agenda these days and I continue what I now see as a reconnection with the community of friends, with life on the continent, 'in Europe' the English would say, to my ever renewed amusement.
I discover the efficiency of car-pooling. A driver takes me on the long road to Brittany for a pittance, all of the 750 kilometres from the Basque country. Ping! Phil and I leave the quiet waters, cafés and sunny alleyways of Loctudy, South Finistere, for the Glénan archipelago.
After 4 hours of sailing, we anchor off l'île Guériden, a vision in golden sand and turquoise sea topped by a tuft of hardy weeds clinging to a bed of granite. High water will almost completely cover it but right now, it is a Carribean-like heaven.
L'île Penfret offers a good shelter for the night, between the bird sanctuary and the 'teenager sanctuary', the reputed Glénan Sailing School. Throughout the evening, we are sandwiched between two cacophonies of similar intensity, shrieks, squawks and screeches on one side and French rap on the other. In the darkness of night, all is finally quiet. Just the light slapping of the chop against the hull and myriads of stars, the Milky Way in its full awesome splendour.
This will carry me through the ups and down of property hunting. I have secured a base in Figeac because, yes, I know two things now. First, it will take time. Second, a home is nothing without the community of friends.
The joy of togetherness, what makes us human, will not be denied. Ping!
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
In Camaret, we've all been cooped up during one of the wettest autumns and winters on record but now, with the sun out at last, the streets are comparatively more lively, which is not saying much. There is some mild grousing at the baker's and in 2 metre apart huddles by the supermarket. I catch anxious and grumbly snippets of information as I walk past. '37% of the French population is depressed' or 'Bloody Parisians brought the virus to Morbihan' or 'Pffff... the tourist season is fucked' or ' Restaurants are already filing for bankruptcy'...
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.
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
From Bali, Carmen invites me to a 3 week Deepak Choprah meditation with daily reflective tasks. It proves a peaceful and joyful way to start my days, which then unfold like a dream. I walk the pontoons to the shower block, disturbing shoals of harbour mullets, watch the cormorants diving among the boats, big crabs scuttling under the wooden piles of the boardwalk, gulls gliding above my head, clouds scudding over the horizon. Every sunrise is a new light show.
...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.
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.
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
Rotund, bald-headed and white-bearded, he is a generous soul. The day I crash-land, frazzled, from Indonesia, he is the one who welcomes me with a 'tartiflette' (a potato and cheese rib-sticking recipe from the Alps) and a semolina pudding. I cannot thank him enough for the comfort it brings me that day. A baker all his working life, he still knows how to make mean desserts steeped in rum and dripping with caramel. Very regime.
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'.
You know that life has been very contained when you look forward to an appointment at the dentist's and when a day in the midst of Brest's square, stalinist architecture is an entertaining prospect. Small stores are now open (masks, sanitiser, no dressing rooms) and, France being France, bookshops are too. And libraries! Though there is no public access, it is possible to call and collect books. Gwenaëlle, Camaret's smiling librarian, has a specially selected pile of comics waiting for me on a trestle behind the entrance door. Things are really looking up.
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.
One morning in April, the fog was so thick, boats were only ghostly masts emerging out of nothingness. The water could be heard but not seen and I almost stepped over the side into the soup. There was a shape on the pontoon, a young man, I discovered, taking pictures. Pictures? In this obliterated world? Ah, but, unseen from the shore, his girlfriend was skinny-dipping. Their laughter was absorbed by the muffled air, a happy bubble within nature's invisibility cloak.
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.
