Paris, Tuesday 17th March

Busy day. The government has closed everything down and insisted (or a fine) people stay inside except for brief grocery shopping trips, doctors’ visits, pharmacy visits (we are so lucky to have corner pharmacies still, with kindly advice-giving pharmacists who know you by name; also good small grocery shops and fruit and vegetable markets). We had decided to return to the Vaucluse where, at least, we can go outside and even biking and hiking. My husband booked a car for this evening, but something he read made him think he should try to pick it up this morning. Lucky for us he did. They were shutting down at lunch, but had no cars, even though we had reserved and paid. After a lot of palaver (and they were helpful) they found a car that had been turned in but not yet cleaned and my husband drove it home and cleaned it. Tomorrow we leave and hopefully won’t be stopped, because we have heard there were guards at the autoroute toll booths. Of course, we’ll quarantine when we arrive and won’t go into any shops on the way down. Fingers crossed.

This morning there were some people in the streets, some of them wearing masks. This afternoon when I went out to buy some food and pick up a prescription there was no one. The shopkeepers I saw said people had shopping in the morning but not in the afternoon and the indoor market will be closing at 3 pm for the next couple of weeks. I went by the soup kitchen, where I volunteer; they too are closing, but giving out packed lunches in the morning to anyone who needs one. Two small kids were playing soccer with their dad on the square in front of the church; a student-age young woman was running up and down the church steps.

Our group of buildings too has emptied out but one resident had organized a little gathering (4 people) of those who remain, with chocolates and freshly-squeezed pomegranate juice. We chatted at a distance from one another in the courtyard, and then headed up our stairs to our suppers.

Paris, Monday 16th March

Terrible article in the NYTimes yesterday about Europe by Steve Erlanger. I didn’t read the whole thing though, the part where he gets into the Black Death. But what an accumulation of clichés and banalities in the opening paragraphs.

We voted around lunchtime, came home, stayed inside until late afternoon, then went to the park, which was unusually crowded—nowhere else to go, I guess, all the places people might usually go on a Sunday (most stores aren’t open anyway on Sunday in Paris) being closed. The cherry trees were beautiful and it has been many years since we were here to see them. When the sun started to go down, we moved to the east side of the park where there were even more people, so many there wasn’t an empty chair. We hovered, at a safe distance, until some people got up and commandeered theirs, and read for a while at a safe distance from others, until my husband, who is a virologist, said he could smell virus wafting over the flower beds and we went home.

This morning we are thinking we should leave the city while we still can.

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.