Nostalgia for France

Posted: 5th October 2021

When St Giles Day dawned on 1 September, I had not seen the Mainland for nearly a year. Well, almost, I had been to Calais, just before the curtain came down in December. We went to liberate some cases of a friend’s wine from a warehouse, but I was able to nip into an Auchan and buy one or two things I needed to ‘save Christmas’ (as they say now) before we rejoined the queue for the Tunnel. I did not break bread or drink wine in the short time I was there, so it hardly counts.

In February, when I normally spend a few days in Provence, France was locked down too, and it was not until August that it became completely clear that I could travel there without paying hundreds of pounds to some crook to put my PCR test in the nearest bin. By mid-September I was ready to risk it. Spurning the cowboys, I booked a test with Boots, and was tense with excitement when my daughter told me she had been teaching a boy whose whole class had come down with it. She took the test, and two days before my departure the result came back negative. I was free to leave.

Before I could join our depleted party at the Gare de Lyon I had to visit my ninety-four year old mother who was laid up with a broken tibia in a hospital in the 14th Arrondissement. Paris looked busy, but everyone wore masks, inside and out. At the railway station I had to present my covid passport as well. There was a perceptible rigour in force, one unknown in Britain, even at the height of the crisis.