French Letter: La Vie en Rose is visible at last through the mist

It’s proving to be a slow and painful experience, like an athlete recovering from a severe injury, but, as Covid begins to relax its grip, France is cranking itself up in anticipation of what, weather permitting, promises to be something like an approximation of summer. 

The first traffic jams have been spotted on Le Périphérique; queues have been forming at the entrance to the Louvre; restaurateurs across the country are rearranging the furniture and dusting off the cobwebs as they prepare for the grand re-opening that is pencilled in for June 9. 

I say weather-permitting because Spring this year in France has been noticeable chiefly by its absence. If you know The Dead, the famous short story by James Joyce, you will recall the author’s description of the weather one winter’s day in his homeland; “Snow was general all over Ireland. It was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves.” 

Joyce could just as easily have been writing about the rain, falling sans cesse in France since the false Spring of mid-February that showed us the sun for the first time in months only to hide it again behind dark clouds that ever since have shrouded the landscape from Calais to Nice. 

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth repeating: France is not a southern country; it’s just further south than Britain. If you are a native of Lille, Rouen, Reims or Amiens, indeed of the whole top third of the country from Brest to Metz, Paris included, you will know a thing or two about rain, wind and freezing temperatures from November through to March. 

That said, the last three months have stood out for their sheer cussedness. The vines of Bordeaux were inundated with snow and ice just as the buds were showing, ensuring one of the worst vintages for a century. Further north, towns along the Charente were waist-deep in floodwater. Thunderstorms regularly lighted up the Cote d’Azur. Here in Brittany, my newly reinstated garden furniture was pelted with hailstones as recently as last Monday. 

The good news is that, in parallel with the decline of Covid, normality is returning. In the Deep South, sun and clouds, mixed with rain, is giving way to full-on sunshine, with temperatures exceeding 20 degrees celsius for the first time since last September. There is even talk that the summer now upon us could be “above average,” meaning hot and dry, though whether this is just being put about by the tourist industry and real estate agents is not for me to say. 

Looking on the bright side, the possibility has opened up that my wife and I might finally be able to leave the Shire for the delights of Middle Earth. We have two main objectives. The first is a weekend with friends in Paris, which we hope to achieve after the promised stage two of the déconfinement, due on June 30. 

The second is to spend time in Lyon, France’s second city, a bit like a combination of Edinburgh and Leeds. I haven’t been since 1987 when I covered the trial of Klaus Barbie, the notorious wartime Gestapo chief, who died of leukaemia after serving just four years of a life sentence that in his pomp he would have considered an absurd waste of time and money. 

With its population, including the suburbs of more than two million, Lyon is a splendid counterweight to Paris. It exudes authority and, as the gourmet capital of France, policed by a cadre of 60-something matrons whose word is law, is an epicurean delight. We will next head down the Rhone Valley en route to Cannes from Lyon, where a good friend now lives in a house surrounded by a tropical garden, with only mosquitos for company.

The last time we were in Cannes, we stayed at a villa being house-sat by my friend, the owner of which – an Arab businessman – had been shot a year or so earlier by raiders intent on robbery as he waited in his car for his electrically operated gates to open. More recently, in March, just around the corner from my pal’s house, the caretaker of another luxury villa was found half-incinerated and “emptied of blood” by police, who, in defiance of all logic, said later they thought the dead man had committed suicide. 

We don’t get that kind of drama in central Brittany, where not only is there hardly any Covid, but most people seem to die at the age of 85 out of sheer boredom. Our doctor, an excellent fellow, called me just now to tell me that my wife should drop by this afternoon for her first Covid jab. When I told him that the local pharmacy had beaten him to the draw, he sounded vaguely miffed, as though it was a competition. 

I didn’t tell him that when I went for my first jab, some twenty miles up the road, the elderly health professional assigned to my case – almost certainly a retired doctor pressed back into service – ran my carte vitale through the computer, asked me about possible allergies and any pills I was taking, determined that I should be jabbed in my left shoulder, not my right, and then asked me to follow him. “Sit here and wait until your name is called,” he said. 

It was only half an hour later, when I asked a passing nurse, done up in PPE, what was going on that I discovered he had forgotten the most crucial bit – the actual jab, or piq. The nurse shook her head as if to suggest that this was not the first time this had happened. “Come with me,” she said.

Still, never mind, eh? All’s well that ends well.