Paris, Sunday March 15th

Municipal election day. Stayed home yesterday like a good girl, but went out with my shopping cart around 6pm to do some grocery shopping before the shops closed: to the covered food market a block away, where we (my husband and I) bought fruit and vegetables and the makings of an osso bucco to tide us over the weekend and Monday morning when food shops are mostly closed. True, the supermarket towards the Seine would be open but has narrow aisles and lots of customers, including (usually) tourists, so we have been avoiding it, in favour of the small bio shop behind the 6e city hall, where the three employees wear masks and gloves and take their jobs personally. But, last night, a longish line there too, customers who normally shop day by day filling large bags, stocking up. Even the unbleached toilet paper was gone… . In the streets between St Sulpice and the Bd St Germain the cafes were full. We hadn’t, at that point, realised they’d be closing at midnight.

This morning the street is empty, lots of parking spots. Sun, for the moment. Will go out later to vote, but for now quite happy to stay home with my books. I’m reading James Merrill, also Le Carré’s latest spy story on audio, from Libby…and a lot of newspapers.

Paris, Saturday 14 March

When we looked down into the street from our 4th floor windows this morning, most of the parking spaces, usually filled, often with someone cruising around looking for a place, are empty, which feels eery. The streets are also emptier than usual in this central Paris neighbourhood. Yesterday, to avoid public transportation (excellent in Paris) I took a cab to a doctor’s appointment, and the driver said the situation was a disaster for him; I was his first fare of the day at 2 in the afternoon, and there was a long line of cabs behind him at the taxi stand hoping for fares. My daughter in London says their supermarket shelves are cleaned out, though the corner grocery she mostly uses still has food. But he says his customers are buying more than usual, and he feels his stocks will soon be depleted too. Our corner pharmacy (no big pharmacies in France) is very busy, and the two pharmacists look exhausted, though they are as helpful as always. We’ve abandoned the supermarket, where it’s difficult to avoid other customers, and are using the small bio shop, which has most things we need. Our Tunisian fruit and vegetable seller in the covered market says he has fewer customers, and the little Chinese take-away at the other end of the market, where we buy ‘raviolis’ (pot stickers) has closed, no one knows why.

Saint Andrews and StAnza

Sorry to be leaving this quaint town with its stone houses and lovely shoreline. Yesterday the sun was out, the sky blue, and walking along the harbour, I met a woman walking the other way with a dog, We nodded to one another. ‘Beautiful day,’ we agreed, and I ‘Is is always so beautiful here?’ ‘No,’ she responded, as we went our ways. A few fishing boats, a couple yachts, traps for crabs or lobsters, stack on the quay. People on the wide, wide strand, a little like Scheveningen, near The Hague in Holland, on the North Sea. But also something of Vancouver to make me feel at home. Lush nature, but at the same time, something austere in the air.

The reading went well. The real treat was to hear Michael Longley read yesterday evening. I’ve long had most of his books, but I’ve never seen or heard him, and it was certainly one of the outstanding readings I’ve been to, ever. No space between the poet and poems, and one felt, the man. Of course, this could just be the perfection of the persona, but if so, it wasn’t obvious. He ended before his time was up and came and sat in the audience for the second reading. He says he is publishing a new book soon, ‘about grandchildren,’ and ‘it may be my last.’

StAnza is, I believe, Scotland’s most important poetry festival. I was glad I was here.

Sunday 1 March, 5 pm

It seems to be snowing outside—or at least the rain is thickening and whitening. We were planning to go out for tea at Mariage Freres a few blocks away, but the body shudders, in its Sunday afternoon torpor, at the thought of dressing up (coat, boots, hate, gloves, bumbershoot) and venturing into the gloom. Still one should really get out of the house at some point. A movie, maybe? ‘Parasite’ which is on nearby?

Or maybe it’s safer to stay tucked up inside, not risk encountering the Virus, unless we are, unknown to ourselves, already infected? A lovely dinner last evening with neighbours in the building, during which we all uneasily joked about catching it and neither embraced nor shook hands, but bowed courteously in the Japanese fashion, admiring the gesture’s reticence and healthiness.

Shall we go? says my husband. Well…

No, we are staying home, whether out of lethargy or fear (wetness, viruses). My husband will make tea. I will continue reading a new biography of Larkin, bought in London 6 weeks ago, and not very good: bits of Life interspersed with Poem Contexts and Analyses. My individual volumes of Larkin are in Palo Alto; here I have the Collected, most frustratingly organized, pages falling out, that defect of ageing Faber paperbacks.

Maybe I’ll go onto the back porch and dig another couple bagfuls of soil out of a big square plastic (faux terra cotta) planter, so I can chuck the planter. Presently it is too heavy to lift off its corner of the porch. Pigeons nest in it, despite the forks and shiny CDs spinning on their strings.The soil can be dumped in the back of the building garden.

Off to London and St Andrews next Wednesday, unless the Virus. . .

Thursday: back to Paris tomorrow.

Woke this morning to dark cloud, then a steady drizzle and the Plain below us in misty rain shadow, the prospect of a lazy day listening to drops fall on the roof—lovely in places where rain is only occasional. Now it has stopped and we managed a walk towards the next village, without seeing a soul, though a few birds were singing. Now we close the house, move chairs inside, even the broken ones, admire the almond trees in pink or white blossom—no almond trees in Paris—try to get

masks for the train (sold out; the pharmacist laughed) or maybe a little bottle of hand sterilizer. Perhaps we should stay put—but I’m hoping to get to Scotland for StAnza, the poetry festival, next week. I’m training all the way—the plane was expensive, and I rather enjoy the idea of staring out the window at northern scenery for a few hours—and a stopover in London.

Friday 28 February

Sitting in the TGV station in Avignon, in a cafe, catching up on emai.

Malaucene, cafe

Tuesday: Windows open on the Plain below with its villages and orchards. The little terrier across the road has been yapping all morning long, at a group of workers in their workers’ yellow vests doing I don’t know what. They made some attempts to shut the dog up, but finally renounced. Yesterday I passed them, on my bike, working along the road higher up.

The almond trees are all gradually flowering. It is a tree that can grow wild in the countryside so there are lots around, and it is special to be here and see them begin to flower, as the first sign of spring. I think dogwood in the woods around Vancouver used to do something similar. Last night, sitting reading (The Dolphin Letters) in the big room I watched twilight come towards the hills beyond the village and two almond trees, one wholly in bloom, the other starting, shining against the dark hills, mostly pine and oak—green oak, but also the kind that keeps its warm brown dry leaves all winter.

Thursday: Wonderful not to have an internet connection in the house. Am I the only one who can get distracted by its presence (I don’t have a cell phone), checking the latest, mostly political news at all hours of the day, unable to read a long print article through without being tempted by something online. Here I’m reduced to reading old New Yorkers through, word by word—I’ve just discovered that even the brief descriptions of past art shows are interesting, one last December in NYC, for instance, about Shaker furniture and minimalism (Agnes Martin, my compatriot). Twice-weekly visits to a café with internet in the next town are good enough, plus full of human interest.

Yesterday afternoon we decided to hike up again to ‘Clairier’ and poke around in the Roman ruins, an oppidum dismantled for centuries in the woods, mostly unvisited, except, it appeared, by some kids who have fashioned a stone hut from some of the heaps of stones, with a moss-covered tree trunk roof. Lots of moss: the site is on the icy north side of the ridge. It’s a magic place, a little like coming on Machu Pichu for the first time, in scrub oak and broom and brambles. Yesterday we went hunting for a ‘wall’ that my brother-in-law had seen once years ago, in its glory, but couldn’t find at all more recently. We pushed through prickly brush (possibly along animal—boar—trails) and found what we think must be its remnants, and then freezing, walked by to the human trail on the sunny side.

On the way back down to the car, past the goat (cheese) farm, I found some violets in flower in a cleft of the rock and along the roadside.

And oh, this morning sitting in the sun on the gravel with a mug of coffee in the small, walled garden, there were white roses in bloom along the wall, and four almond trees coming into or already flowering outside.

Malaucene, France

This is from one of several village cafes in this town in the Vaucluse. It is Saturday evening (before dinnertime for French people) and it is busy. In fact, even the bar is standing-room only, though it is cold so there are lots of empty tables outside that in summer would be filled with tourists, a lot of them here for the biking. We are at the foot of the Mont Ventoux, which is a monument of the Tour de France and well-known for that, even as far away as California. Tonight the six or so tables are filled with people playing cards, grey-haired many of them: perhaps this is a Saturday-night ritual. There are two TV sets with soccer games on them, and they too have a crowd watching. There’s a little girl kneading yellow play-do; maybe it’s the barman’s daughter or granddaugher—no, she just went to ask some of the card players how much longer she is going to have to wait before they can all go home, or maybe she likes being here under TV set #2. I like it here. I wish I didn’t have to answer emails and could just people-watch. Someone just brought in a pizza from the pizza truck that has set up for the evening in the parking lot outside the small supermarket, a parking lot which is also the market place a couple mornings a week.

There. I’m just rattling on. It’s very distracting with all that’s happening. Someone has just given the little girl a piece of pizza.

StAnza Poetry Festival, March, St Andrews, Scotland

Oh dear, I haven’t written here in ages, mea culpa, and now I’m writing out of self-interest.

So let’s get that over with first: I will be reading on March 6th, 1-2 pm, in what I hear is an extraordinary celebration of poets and poetry. Here is the link: http://www.stanzapoetry.org/festival/poets-artists/bie-brahic. I will be reading alongside other winners of the Wigtown Book Festival 2019 Poetry Prizes. And there are lots of other wonderful events to go to and people to meet, all of which you can see by following the StAnza 2020 links.

I am sitting, with my husband in a Malaucene cafe, over Scotches and email. We don’t have internet in our house in a nearby Vaucluse village. It adds about 2 hours to my daily time for reading, biking and walking, but we do need to catch up on stuff, including the news, once or twice a week. And the Scotch is good, though today we are trying something cheaper than Glenfiddich. There are 2 television sets. One had something about horse racing and the other is too far away to see, though it seems to be mostly ads. When we’ve soaked in internet news for a while we will do something more banal, like grocery shopping.

The weather is cold—there’s a fierce mistral (north wind). Yesterday we hiked part way up the Mont Ventoux and it was snowing halfway up and we hadn’t even taken gloves. But we kept on doggedly and bought a hot water bottle on the way home. Today we hiked to La Roque Alric and back, and that was warmer, even sheltered in places. Too much wind to bike, but we’ve been doing lots of that too. Daily routine: write (me), play the flute (my husband), lunch, bike or walk, read, dinner, read, bed. Lovely.