Paris Diary

24 November 2020

Well, here I am again, after a hiatus—everything seemed so repetitive I could no longer get out and chronic about the weather, the empty streets, which are again empty, though our November lockdown is, it seems, to be somewhat eased.

I like the empty streets, I like being able to walk straight down the middle of the rue de Vaugirard, though, I admit with a wary eye for the occasional driver enjoying the chance for speed. A bus trip to an appointment Place de l’Alma takes 10 minutes, as the bus driver rattles along with a little smile on his face. In our neighbourhood the powers that govern us have decided it is roadworks season. First intersecting coloured lines on the roads and sidewalks like a stripped-down metro map; then some portacabins, under our windows, actually, and a WC. Then teams of workers tearing up the sidewalks and carefully stockpiling Ikea-type bags but bigger full of granite paving stones and cobbles. The work starts not long after 6 when the workmen arrive and socialise, loudly. Seems churlish to complain, since they’ve probably trekked in from afar, and it would be understandable if they thought little of the privileged hoping for another hour of quilted sleep.

But I’ve licked all the windows (lecher les vitrines = window shop), and though more shops are open than in the spring lockdown and we can walk (one hour, no further from home than 1 km, carrying a certificate on our honour about why we have ventured outside) to the butcher, the baker, the greengrocer, the fishmonger and even the chocolateer and the most marvelous of hardwares, we would love to be able to go biking, or failing that walking up hills, in the country.

PARIS DIARY

Monday 13 July 2020

A few days ago we had a rehearsal for the Bastille Day flyover looping back to their airfields from the Place de la Concorde. I guess that means we’ll have good seats for the real thing tomorrow.

Life in Paris feels almost normal, absent the tourists. Yesterday the temperature was cool, but the sun was out, and we took a walk along the Right Bank Quai, from the Louvre almost to the Arsenal, and returned via the Iles St Louis and de la Cité, where there was an outdoor flea market on the bridge linking the two islands. The quai was busy with walkers, bikers, scooters, joggers etc. Lots of kids, music, outdoor cafés, sun bathers. We stopped for an ice cream at Berthillon on the Ile St Louis, managed to get a table inside (masks, gel, windows, doors open, half the tables blocked). The line to get in was short, so we waited.

If there are tourists they are mostly invisible and French-, or occasionally Italian-speaking. Café terraces are full, shops are probably emptier than usual, but there are people inside, especially since the sales are on. Most shops won’t let shoppers in without masks, at least around us, and people seem to know and comply without any trouble, unlike what we hear about the situation in the US, which is, frankly, difficult to believe.

PARIS DIARY

Sunday 28th June

Sunday morning and the church across the street is bleating out hymns. They need to up the tempo. On the other hand it may be suited to the world at the moment. 

Street noise most of the night: car doors slamming, people screaming. I listened to an audio production of Medea yesterday and some of the screams sounded like the climax of the play. But I couldn’t bring myself to close the window: the cool air after three days of 90/30+ heat was soothing.

Cool air and breezes. One knocked my insect—bird?—kite off the window where it does double duty as ornament and curtain (there are neighbours right across the courtyard). I lay it on the bed, then I stepped on the pushpin that held the kite and had popped off. Tried to push it back into the wood with my thumb, too hard; the hammer was in a cupboard in a toolbox and I was feeling lazy. My eye fell on the long, smooth, black, flat-on-one-side stone I beachcombed somewhere (Vancouver? Brittany?) that I use as a paperweight I thought of my stone age forebears and used the stone. Bang, bang. Perfect! The kite is back up.

PARIS DIARY

Tuesday 23 June 2020

Life seems to return to normal. Yesterday all kindergarten, primary and middle school pupils went back to school for the last two weeks of the school year; social distancing, from what I read, has been somewhat relaxed in the classroom, and it is expected that 90% of pupils will be present. Families around us returned from the country, and when I asked two pre-teens in our building how school was today late this afternoon, they said, ‘Très bien, merci Madame.’

I ran grocery errands in the covered market, then we took today’s Le Monde to the park and read it. The usual boulles, chess and checker players; the children’s playground newly open and full of small children and their parents or grandparents or minders. Everything looked very green with out fresh eyes, the chestnut trees taller, the delphinium bluer…

It is hotter tonight. We ordered a mobile AC unit, but it isn’t being delivered till next Monday, when perhaps we won’t need it any more. Tomorrow I’m doing a shift at the Soupe. We were said to be one of the few soup kitchens open, and had almost twice the usual number of eaters, but perhaps the city’s other kitchens are also reopening?

PARIS DIARY

Sunday 21 June 2020

Paris begins to feel like life as usual. Aperitif with neighbours last night; we all (four) arrived with masks, which no one wore. I window-shopped the sales. On the other hand, there was a long line on the sidewalk to gain access to the Bon Marché department store, which may or may not have started its sales; the hotel around the corner, behind the church, is apparently on the verge of bankruptcy, perhaps helped by a small encampment of homeless people nearby; I had a package delivered from India via DHL by a young man on a bicycle who could have been my son--not the usual delivery profile--maybe a student with a summer job--but not your usual middle class (whatever that means) student summer job; the number of bag lunches being handed out at the Soupe Populaire, where I worked a shift on Thursday, is almost double the number of lunches the Soupe was serving before the lockdown.

PARIS DIARY

Saturday 20 June 2020

We have been back in Paris for a week now, shocked at first by the crowds in the streets after seeing perhaps half a dozen people for 2-3 months, gradually adapting to the new normal: masks, few people in the shops where entry is restricted, gel waiting to be used. In the open air fewer masks are being worn—perhaps about 50% of the time, and not so much on people under, say, the age of 30. No tourists, or extremely few: I heard a family speaking Italian on the Ile de la Cité where I went to buy plants and detoured around Notre Dame. If there are out-of-towners they are French speakers. Still, café terraces (no eating inside yet) are packed and tables overflow onto the street or, where sidewalks are wide, onto the areas outside neighbouring shops.

We have taken buses in the middle of the day. That’s ok. Haven’t ventured into the Metro yet. Lots of walking, in parks and along the Seine.

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.

VAUCLUSE DIARY

Sunday 24 May 2020

What I have done so far today: binge-read news first thing in the morning and again after lunch. Only the headlines, mostly, because I can write the stories myself, so little is new. Have sworn not to click on any article with Trump in the headline. Discovered Politico’s European Edition and was annoyed that most of the cartoons in their weekly roundup were sourced in the US. Does Politico not take to non-English language humour? Or is it just the difficulty of translating the captions? Website too anglo-centered. Opened the Atlantic and discovered I hadn’t read it in a while.

What is new in the news is that the focus is shifting from the virus to the economy. What is heartening, in Europe, is how unanimous public and political opinion has been about putting lives before the economy, how many jobs have been saved, and why not? Isn’t it better in every way to subsidize salaries than resort to unemployment?

Raging mistral (north wind) blowing outside. The entry and stairs down to the main house are littered with petals from little dying roses, once pink now beige. My Marseille mother-in-law would take to her bed when the mistral blew, sending grit and leaves into the house. Paul, our next door neighbour, yesterday afternoon promised “mistral le samedi ne va pas jusqu’à lundi” (mistral on Saturday, gone by Monday). Here’s hoping.

I have been to the dry cleaner twice in 3 weeks and again next week, with the duvets. I have rinsed cushions and strewn them across the terrace in the sun, hoping 60 years of strains will disappear in the (bright) sun. My husband, not normally an enthusiastic handyman, finds all kinds of little jobs to do. Yet I don’t think our life would be very different without the virus, so we can count ourselves lucky. Nothing new there. Oh, there would be more possible distractions, especially in Paris. On the whole I like being forced to stay home, no excuses to be made for my unsociability. I think this life is just fine, except that I would like to see my babies in the flesh.

‘What do you want to do this afternoon?’ asks my husband. ‘Go for a bike ride,’ I say. Even not looking at him I feel his nod as he disappears downstairs to practice the flute.