European Election Day

We caught a train back to Paris from the Vaucluse yesterday afternoon, arrived in a downpour. Caught a bus home, sunny again. Unpacked, grocery-shopped, tried to adjust to city from country. I miss the country, the repetitive few things you do each day. In the city I already feel guilty about all the things on offer that I don’t do, as I observe my few routines: the view out the bedroom window to the church roof (bells ringing noon right now), the view out the kitchen window over the tiny mop-and-bucket balcony, a few plants, to a jigsaw puzzle of roofs.

The European elections are today in France, and I gather the results for all of Europe will be published tomorrow. It seemed funny that different countries voted on different days, but it was a relief to discover that the results for the early-voting-countries would not be made public until everyone had voted, as one country’s results might easily affect the vote elsewhere. It is an important election, given the rise of the far right across Europe and the unresolved problems of social media interference in the process.

Meanwhile it is a summeryish day. I am putting my books away (Marilyn Hacker, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Bernard O’Donoghue), and will go and vote, and then think about getting some exericse, outdoors.