VAUCLUSE DIARY

Saturday 23 May 2020

I have been wearing my black jogging pants for 3 months. I do wash them now and then, and there have been a few days when it was too hot for fleece, but basically they’re my quarantine uniform. They aren’t black any more but grey, and they have holes, but the holes are tiny. For comfort they’re hard to beat; for summer I want to buy a dress that doesn’t touch my body anywhere below the shoulders. This assumes I will conquer my fear of entering a shop and trying on a dress.

Quarantine regime in France update: for the past two weeks we have been able to leave home for any length of time, without an on-your-honour permission slip; but no farther than 100 km. Which excludes Paris. Without a good excuse. It is pretty amazing how disciplined the French are. So far.

Anything becomes routine pretty fast. Our daily: stroll, masked, to the village to buy our baguette and Le Monde. Lunch. Read (reread) the news, which fills the time available; shop for food (once a week). Bike. Hike. Facetime with kids in their time zones. Dinner. Read. Bed. Repeat.

Reading this week (in case I ever come back to this and wonder): Graham Green, Trollope, Mary Norris, the comma queen, David Sedaris. Books borrowed from Libby, which has the guilting function of watching how fast you are reading them, and putting up nudges like “are you finished?'“ and “one person waiting.”

The photo is the village last week from a hill above. Broom is everywhere flowering, and I’m translating Leopardi’s poem “Broom.”