Yesterday was the quatorze juillet. We were cordially invited to join the ceremony down at the mairie. A fellow communard delivered it the other day in a white van. The mutt did her nut because there must have been another dog in the van, presumably of the hunting genus. Although I didn't know the man from Adam, I recognised his beard and have probably spotted him in these parts, dressed in camouflage gear and sporting a rifle. We didn't go. It's just another excuse to drink a verre d'amitié (a glass of alcoholic friendship) and we wouldn't have been honouring any dead other than those who stormed the Bastille over two centuries again.
As the screw is turned and our civil liberties are gradually removed, you would hope that mobs of angry revolutionaries would storm the presidential palace. Instead, within hours of the announcement, people have been queuing up in their thousands to book appointments with the needle. Who can blame them really? Living in a city, you'd be excluded from public transport and unable to get to work, let alone from drinking your sorrows away in a bar or chatting with a friend over a coffee and croissant on some boulevard of broken dreams.
Nevertheless, when the Good Wife read out the gist of the address on her phone, the three of us felt angry and frustrated enough for our own private revolution. We were at the local cinema to see Nomadland, which was every bit as good as claimed: a film, also, about society's excluded ones, not by dint of health, but by an economic system that continues to tolerate the acquisition of billions by the tiny but powerful few. Without so much as a murmur, it often seems. Frances McDormand was fantastic. Good luck to the wandering kind that she portrayed so poignantly.
That was Monday evening, the glorious 12th July. New friends from Ulster with whom we passed a splendid afternoon recently told us that the hard-line Prods of the province were busy building bonfires to light that same evening. One in particular in East Belfast, a poor area where the Protestant and Catholic communities live on top of each other in uneasy acquiescence, was apparently several storeys high, big enough to create a conflagration that could easily turn into an urban wildfire. The police felt powerless to do anything about it lest their intervention opened up a can of worms. The worms are still there, though, writhing and wriggling just beneath the surface.
Just as, in fact, the old attitudes on the mainland still prevail. The ignorant few – or are they really so few? – are still trying to deny the obvious, that modern British society is a multi-racial one. 'No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.' My heart sank on Sunday night, watching the final of the European Championships go to extra time and then to the inevitable penalties. Then, after Rashford and Sancho missed their penalties, the final chance was handed to the 19-year old Bukayo Saka, a lovely lad who plays, what's more, for my team, Arsenal. Of course his shot would be saved. I didn't mind so much that England lost to Italy, not after all the media hype and the national nonsense about football coming home, what hurt was the certainty that Saka and his other two team mates would receive messages of hate on social media. And so it inevitably came to pass. Sure, we shouldn't get so hung up about social media and sure, there were many more messages of sympathy and support, but how distressing that anyone courageous enough to take on such a burden of responsibility should be abused for the colour of their skin.
Earlier in the day, just to compound the misery, our daughter's good looking Italian contender with the massive serve lost in four sets to Djokovic in the Wimbledon men's final. None of us bothered watching because the inevitability of a Serbian victory far outweighed the faint possibility of an Italian upset. I keep telling myself that he's a decent enough human being, but I just can't help disliking the man. Is it the fact that his haircut makes him look like a human Action Man? Is it the robotic nature of his game, which transforms him into a Yul Bryner character from Westworld? No matter how hard and how often you attempt to stop him in his tracks, he just keeps on getting up. John McEnroe did a little piece about how someone who will never be a crowd favourite should nevertheless be respected for his brilliance. Bugger that. Given his 'wolf energy' and his attentive team of fitness trainers, he will probably dominate proceedings for at least another three years and end up with 25 or more Grand Slams. He'll be the chosen GOAT, but give me an artist like Federer rather than a machine any day of the Wimbledon fortnight.
We've had so much Monsoon rain of late, no doubt diverted by global warming from the west coast of the U.S.A. and Canada, that the woods are full of wild mushrooms. Country folk emerge from the trees with carrier bags full of girolles and cêpes. Like billionaires, they jealousy guard their secrets and never dream of sharing their haul with anyone. The three of us walked the dog late one morning, walking very, very slowly through the damp woods in an effort to spot edible mushrooms among the undergrowth. We found some girolles and a faux cêpe and made an omelette for our lunch. On the whole, I'd rather eat mushrooms than insects. The day must come, but not yet – although we are considering changing Daphne's croquettes to a new French brand made with insect protein.
That same day, the Daughter spotted an enormous caterpillar just before lunch. It was green and the size of a pea pod, and probably the equivalent of a T-bone steak in terms of its protein count. Since it was wriggling its way over to the flower bed and seemingly intent on a feast, I went to fetch the dustpan and brush with the idea of moving the beast to the middle of the field. When I came back, it had gone, nowhere to be found. It could reappear in a few days as the kind of king-size butterfly you might find in the Costa Rican rainforest. Or some flower-devouring superbug. Strange Days, as the Doors once entitled an album of theirs.
