VAUCLUSE DIARY

Thursday 11 June 2020

I had to look up the date and day. They all flow into one, without distinguishing features. I note in my agenda the passage of a plumber or fridge repairperson, and our biking destinations. A few days ago we did the Gorge de la Nesque; we dream of climbing the Mont Ventoux on the gradual (Sault) side.

Tomorrow we drive back to Paris, but expect to return here in July. Last night I began reading Defoe’s Journal of a Plague Year. A few years ago I picked it up, but it wasn’t the moment. Now, as I discovered reading the first 30 pages, it definitely is. Not much has changed since 1664, only conspiracy theories and internet myths updating superstition in the form of annunciatory comets.

The June 6th Economist has an essay on Pushkin’s cholera quarantine in the autumn of 1830: ‘My dark thoughts have dissipated: I am now in the country and enjoying myself. You [Pletnev, Pushkin’s correspondent] cannot imagine how joyous it is to run away from a fiancée and to sit here and write poetry…You can ride horses as much as you want, write at home as much as you please, and be disturbed by no one.’

Shops have reopened, however. Also (except in the Paris region) cafés and restaurants. Not a lot of people wearing masks. Our next door neighbour put a mask in his pocket to attend a funeral yesterday but no one else was wearing one, so it stayed in his pocket. Looking at the Hopkins’ stats online this morning, however, the situation is not all that rosy.