Today we celebrate our 10th year of being here.
A lot has happened over the decade.
But because everything around us and in our lives is now normal I find I'm pretty much talked out. No words of wisdom. No more jokes. No humorous highlights.
Nope. Nuttin. It's sure been fun, though.
I'll leave this blog on-line for the foreseeable future.
Thanks for reading.
I think this will be the second to the last blog entry I will make here before putting my rambling blabbering living in Europe comments on ice. But as I go, I'd like to share a couple things.
The subject of this post is nose *boops*.
My wife had friends over for tea, so I headed out to see the Salon International de l'Agriculture. It is held just down the street from where we live and I wanted to be away for a few hours to give Jude time to enjoy the company of her female friends.
The Salon is a farm show like only the French can put on. The animals are beautiful. The farmers seem passionate about what they do.
I started in the Pavillon dedicated to bovines. It was good to see that the animals had gotten used to the vast throngs of folk wandering around and petting the beasts that were within reach. I didn't want to add to the reaching and touching, so I let them be and just took photos and admired the living beings as they were.
One calf took a long look at me and came over to nose *boop* my hand. It'd been a long time since I'd been *booped* by such a cute animal. The last time was when we were in Nice and we went to see a very special guard dog who's domain happens to be a classic car shop. Our guard dog is a tiny little teckel a poil dur. He melted our hearts on first sight three years ago and try to visit him, to the delight of his owner, each time we're in town.
Returning to the Salon, not long after being *booped* by the calf I saw that a parade of Charolais cattle were being returned to their pens after putting on a show in a ring nearby.
I knelt down and took photos of the passing animals when one big guy, he must've been easily 1500kilos, came ambling along. What a magnificent animal he was, too.
He pulled up just in front of me, took a look my direction, and just stood there as if to say "Hi. I'm here for my photo, thank you." After a few moments and dozens of photos I stood up. He seemed to realize the photo was "in the can" and he could move along.
The young lady who was guiding him back to the stall said he knew how to "ham it up" for the camera and she, too, thanked me for taking his photo. I felt as if I'd been nose *booped* from a distance by a princely beast.
Spread across several Pavillons the show can be a little difficult on tender feet. There was so much I wanted to see, but knew I couldn't take it all in. One Pavillon I wanted to see the most was where the horses were kept. I headed over to have a final look at things.
The show ring didn't seem to have much of interest going on, so I wandered the aisles and had a look at how everyone was doing.
Just as in the bovine Pavillon I happened to be on an aisle when a show let out and handlers were bringing their animals back to their resting places. The horses were parading by when one headed my direction, and *boop* went his nose against the shoulder. The young lady who was guiding him said her horse liked me.
It would be interesting to do a study of nose *boops*, their frequencies, the reasons behind them, and what might be their effects on humans. But I will leave that for another more interested generation to sort out.
Snow.
Yes. You read it right.
No fool'n. Big. White. Fluffy. Flakes. Of. Snow.
No.
This is not snow.
But if you step outside and look up,
it kind of looks like this right now.
Living where we do, we absolutely know much how fortunate we are to live in peace. There is mental space and physical safety to do the things we want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.
Not everyone has this option these days. We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking. People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement. We wish peace for everyone.
And the best of luck to Peter Turnley. He is in the Ukraine right now. What he says about the refugees and the photographs he is making of them fleeing the war zone gives serious pause.
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The pandemic hit hard two years ago.
We were in Nice when in early March 2020 before a nation-wide confinement had been declared when we contracted the dreaded CV19 virus.
We were laid low for two weeks. Thoughts were strange. Food took on a new and "interesting" taste. We were weak and ached all over. We had a dry cough. We dearly hoped the virus would stay out of our lungs and knew if it didn't that we were to call the doctor as soon as we could.
It was truly a scary time. Not much was known about the virus and we'd gotten caught up in the first wave of it.
The train back from Menton was filled with coughing sick people from Italy where the first wave of Covid 19 had entered Europe. A few days later, sick and coughing Italians were at a table next to us in a small cafe one morning. Sick and coughing locals were all around us during a concert at Notre Dame du Port. We didn't stand a chance.
After recovering we learned that 80 percent of the people who contracted the new virus had effects similar to ours. It was the other 20 percent who got into trouble. A neighbor back in Paris contracted the virus and was in the hospital and rehabilitation for over four months. He survives, but he's not nearly what he used to be.
Feeling fortunate, we wonder if dragging ourselves out to the balcony to bask under the Mediterranean sun an hour and a half a day during our illness had a positive effect on our outcome. Though, in truth, our odds were 4 to 1 that things would be OK.
Due to the nation-wide lockdown we extended our stay another month. After having spent a total of 4 months on the cote d'Azur if felt strange flying back into Paris. People who did not live here were turned away. Large tour groups and many individuals were all sent back to flight re-booking desks and were blocked from passing immigration.
If there was anything that summed up the uncertainty of the time it was that our taxi driver was by his own admission Chinese. He refused to wear a mask, and he understood how the world was judging him.
Come January 2021 and things around France had opened enough that we could make the TGV trip back to Nice to spend the winter there for the third year in a row. It looked like the virus was being brought under control.
Except it wasn't under control at all and due to another set of restrictions we needed to extend our stay another month. We also received our first rounds of vaccine, there.
Toward the end of our 2021 winter stay my family blew up and I scrambled to get things re-aligned so my father could return to living a healthy, happy, stress-free life. To put balm to our wounds from family troubles we decided it was worth returning to Nice for a fourth time to just "chill."
This meant that during the 2 year Covid Crisis (which at this point seems nearly over, what with the virus becoming endemic, finally) we spent 11 months out of 24 down south. We were practically locals around Port Lympia and la place Garibaldi.
I realize it's not a bad way to spend a pandemic. Nice and the surrounding region is beautiful. No complaints there. Absolutely none at all. Fortune smiled.
OK. We might grouse in an increasingly French way over the details and some of the unevenness of restrictions as they were applied, and the idiocy we saw first hand (ie: protests against vaccinations and mask), but we are still alive.
Two people in our immediate and extended families died from Covid 19. Fortune frowned.
I recently groused to a friend in England that we were suffering so much from a "bunker mentality" that we didn't know how to behave now that things were opening up. He kindly offered to talk on a regular basis.
Before we could take he and his wife up on their offer it was as if the doors were flung wide open and our Dance Card was suddenly full.
Lunches out with friends. Salons down at la porte de Versailles. Photography exhibitions. Art exhibitions. More lunches with friends. Long walks through our city. Invitations to events and visits to more places that we could've ever imagined.
The need to show our passes sanitaire ends in 5 days. Mask restrictions are loosening up as well.
It's as if someone told us over the intercom that "you are now free to move about the cabin."
I'm sure we'll remember how to live openly and freely. I just wonder who long it'll take for us to get over the constant looking back over the shoulder to make sure we're not being stalked by viral death.
Living where I do, I _know_ very much how fortunate I am to live in peace. There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want. Like write these little blog entries. Not everyone has this option these days.
I wish peace for everyone.
"Aujourd'hui la culture de l'immediatete a tout prix me fait chier."
- Didier Bourdon, Gueuleton #5
I had to stop and think about it, but I feel M.Bourdon is correct.
As we enter the third year of this pandemic I've had a lot of time to sit and look and consider and ponder. These LCD computer and cell-phone displays filled with all manner of gunk and stuff and crap add nothing to life, do they?
This trend of disconnecting from the things that me fait chier started when I realized that Facebook was not some passive platform where I could meet old and make new friends. Rather, Facebook allowed lies to be published unchallenged as the basis of creating conflict that keeps users engaged through the social media platform.
I opt'd out over four years ago and the silence took some getting used to.
Then I shut down my Instagram and Tumbler accounts.
The lack of online "engagement" created space and time in my life.
I figured that if things went "sideways" and there were suddenly tanks in the streets that I'd know what to do. Until then why not go out and live and enjoy and "engage" life unfiltered, unmanaged, un-commented on, and as life really is.
It feels so much better to go out and sit on the balcony that is lit under a winter Niçois sun and experience the Mediterranean sea... all the while looking forward to our return home and the promises and continued experiences of our simple, small lives.
