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Thursday 30 July 2020

Where we've been: 2

We went to France well-prepared; here's stuff we didn't use
Various US politicians, keen to appeal to tough-guy voters, have boasted about not wearing masks. Some have gone further and caught The Plague. I await with interest the first politico – hoping for sculptures to be raised in the state capital – to go further still and die in front of the TV cameras, a ventilator stuffed down his guzzard.*

France is not without its macho men. When the Eiffel Tower was first opened to the public citizens worried about a potential spate of aviational suicides. Cleverer administrators suggested a notice saying “Jump here”, knowing that such show-offs hated doing the obvious.

Trouble was I’d self-isolated back home and had no real comparisons. Even so I was pleasantly surprised, Masks were obligatory in the Intermarché. Not only did virtually everyone toe the line but they kept their masks on while loading their cars. And especially in the butcher’s shop (Ah, that terrific chunk of entrecote – I taste its juices still.) where the need for masks seemed visibly obvious.

We ate out several times: the restaurant tables were socially distanced and waitresses and waiters, resentfully perhaps, hid their sex-appeal behind scraps of pale blue. But you can’t keep an individualistic race down all the time. Halfway through one meal a long-haired beauty (I infer her loveliness since I only saw her back) lit up. How strange.

I go to France to inflict my imperfect, non-idiomatic French on the natives. Masks hinder this. No visits to the doctor or dentist this time. I made do with the pharmacy where I stumbled over turning the noun haemorrhoid into an adjective. Yes the pharmacienne knew the Anglo brand but handed over a French brand anyway.

When the temperature is in the thirties, the brief chill from squirted hand disinfectant is most welcome.

* This has happened since I posted.

6 comments:

  1. I love reading of your journey to France. I don't travel much and never fly, so it's a delight to travel vicariously. Looking forward to further adventures.

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  2. robin andrea: On reflection we were very very lucky. At no time did we break any governmental rules and it is as if we were granted a miraculous time-slot which has now closed. New surges of infection have developed in the north of England and lockdown has returned to huge swathes of the country. Sadly we feel our age forces us back into a more restricted life again and, for instance, we will not be be communally celebrating my birthday next month. Nor will VR be attending a resurrection of her art group planned for today.

    But I have plenty more to say about France and you may also be interested in the progress of a short story I am writing in my parallel blog, Tone Deaf Renewed, based Google's New Blogger format. It can be found by copy/pasting to Google:

    https://ldptonedeaf2.blogspot.com/

    Regard it as a TV soap with installments added as and when my imagination permits.

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  3. Et voila. Herman Cain is dead.

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  4. MikeM: Gone to join Abel I suppose. Still, he was one of the faithful few (now a diminishing band) who actually heard Trump in Tulsa. No doubt medals will be awarded when the real total drops below a hundred.

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  5. 2020, the year we see clearly things we hadn't noticed before or never expected to see.

    And I still can't fathom why nobody mentions D3...

    Hope the numbers are now getting better in your region. Kills me that my family has missed two possible vacation weeks this summer when we might have visited my mother in NC. She's now 91... Our governor demands a 2-week quarantine on return, and neither my husband nor kids can do that. I'll probably end up going alone later in the year, I guess.

    It's too bad you can't have a good group birthday in France! But I'm glad you got away during a safe period, and had a lovely time with family.

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  6. Marly: Torn by responsibility, an irreconcilable dilemma. A mother would understand, mothers usually do. After all you're a mother yourself.

    Cloistered we look outwards and see things we never previously saw. Mass behaviour, individual behaviour, the utter wretchedness of public lies, the heroism of those forced to take risks, the venality. Time's occasional heaviness. The wonder at what it will all seem like from some point in the future; will we boast ("I was there!") or will we remember too much?

    Among the uncertainties remind yourself: you're Marly and she is unique.

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