French Letter: Don’t mention the war in Ukraine

France is waking up. Spring is coming, even in Brittany. But the mood of the country is sombre. 

Last night, at our local pub, closer to Washington than Moscow, no one mentioned the war. Not a word was spoken about the conflict being unleashed at the opposite end of our continent. Instead, slices of delicious carrot cake were distributed, lovingly made by Gill from Wakefield. 

Ken, from Glasgow, described how he and his wife had driven that morning to Quimper to have the cataract in his left eye examined. The doctor at the private clinic asked him when he would like to have the corrective procedure. “As soon as possible,” he replied. “In that case, I can do it now,” the doctor said — and ten minutes later it was done, with little clicks from a laser gun. The cost? €120 (less than a hundred pounds), part of which will be reimbursed by way of Ken’s Carte Vitale. 

One of the French regulars, Sylvan, wanted to know what went into the cake. Carrots, we said. He looked puzzled. But there was something else, he said, licking his lips — a spice, perhaps. Cinnamon and nutmeg, said Gill, a combination that passed Sylvan by completely until Trish, the landlady, or patronne – still waiting for her French citizenship three years after passing all the set tests — came up with canelle and noix de muscade. 

Nothing, though, about Ukraine. The elephant in the room must have retreated to the back bar. 

But Ken had more good news. The dual carriageway from Carhaix to Quimper had finally been completed. All its bits had been joined together and it was now possible to reach the far southwest of Brittany in less than an hour. 

The N164, as it is known, has been the bane of my existence for the last several years. Every time I have driven on it, I get a speeding ticket, on two occasions for driving just 5 kph above the official limit. 

The problem was that stretches of dual carriageway would suddenly give way to ordinary road and then, just as often, to unpaved sections along which we were expected to drive at little more than walking pace. The news that I could now drive all the way to Quimper — one of Brittany’s most celebrated towns — at a steady 90 kph genuinely cheered me up. 

Today, though, I have another matter to attend to — and I don’t just mean this column. The heater in our car has stopped working, or rather the fan that distributes the heat. And the AC button that switches on annoyingly every time we start the engine has gone off as well. I called the local garage. It was very cold outside, I began, pathetically, and my heater had stopped working. Was there any chance…? 

« Of course. Not a problem. Probably a fuse. If you could bring the car in at 13.30, it shouldn’t take long. » 

But you will have seen what happened there. I use Word for Mac. I always have. And only rarely has it let me down. But just now — literally thirty seconds ago — when I tried to type double quotation marks, the French « and » turned up instead. 

And now they won’t go away. 

Talk about First World problems! 

Back in December 1989, in the middle of the Romanian revolution, I found myself in a semi-abandoned hotel in Bucharest attempting to telex my story through to the Sunday Times. It was a tale of derring-do, slated for the front page, and I was determined to get it right.

Unfortunately, the power in the hotel had gone out, leaving me reliant on a 40-watt emergency bulb in a deserted back office. Worse than that, the keyboard on the 1960s telex machine was French (AZERTY rather than QWERTY), and worse than that again, four of the keys were missing, existing only as upturned spikes. 

It took me three hours to assemble the tape containing my breathless prose that I then had to feed through a groove with steel cogs via a line to London that kept cutting out in mid-transmission. 

Outside, meanwhile, people were dying in the streets. They didn’t know the half of it. 

The good news, I suppose, is that the pandemic in France is over — more or less. We still have to wear masks when we’re shopping or entering a bar or restaurant in Brittany, and there is talk of fourth, and even fifth, vaccinations for older folks such as ourselves. But there is a palpable sense of normality in the air. It is as if we have been liberated from a long and tedious occupation.

Do the people of Kyiv and Kharkiv still wear masks? I wonder. 

Seventy-seven years ago, the German Army occupying Brittany went “full tonto” before beginning its final withdrawal. My old friend Alexis, now dead, was seven at the time but remembered the casual brutality of the occupiers as they faced up to the prospect of defeat. Later, he cheered the arrival of Patton’s Third Army, which swept through the Wehrmacht like avenging angels.

The people of Ukraine must wish that Patton was alive today.