Fortune smiled, fortune frowned...

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.

Free to move about...

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.

 

Humans acting poorly...

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.

 

 

Enjoying French sensibilities...

 "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.

 

Happy New Year!

 I very much enjoy Terry Pratchett's way of thinking and expressing things -

“It's amazing how good governments are, given their track records in almost every other field, at hushing up things like alien encounters. One reason may be that the aliens themselves are too embarrassed to talk about it.

It's not known why most of the space-going races of the universe want to undertake rummaging in Earthling underwear as a prelude to formal contact. But representatives of several hundred races have taken to hanging out, unsuspected by one another, in rural corners of the planet and, as a result of this, keep on abducting other would-be abductees. Some have been in fact abducted while waiting to carry out an abduction on a couple of aliens trying to abduct the aliens who were, as a result of misunderstood instructions, trying to form cattle into circles and mutilate crops.

The planet Earth is now banned to all alien races until they can compare notes and find out how many, if any, real humans they have actually got. It is gloomily suspected that there is only one - who is big, hairy, and has very large feet.

The truth may be out there, but the lies are inside your head.” 

― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

 

 

French Poop ~ another adventure

We were getting all gussied up to go visit something owned by the Prince of Monaco.  While not exactly trying to look our Sunday Best, we were trying to appear somewhat acceptable.

 

 

Checking to make sure everything was in order we headed downstairs and out the front door to get into the car.

Except... there was something interesting that had taken place... very interesting, in fact...

The Bird God had blessed us.  Mightily.

The Starlings that Murmur over Nice Port in late Fall, early Winter had done something very special for us.  Or to us, depending on ones perspective. 

 

 

Our car had been carpet bombed nearly to oblivion in Starling Poop.

Every side of the car except the bottom was covered in Bird Doo.  And I mean every side.  It had been a massive explosion.

The cars in front and behind us were covered, too.  The ground was neatly covered in a circle of Starling Carpet Bombing Loveliness.  It was a Ripe Mess, and our car had been the epicenter of that Mess.

We'd never seen anything like it.  One had to admire the accuracy and precision that is normally left to the Dreams of Military Generals.  It was insane how completely the area had been saturated.

 

 

There was nothing for it but to go visit the Place of the Prince as we were.  Covered in Bird Sh*t.  

There wasn't time to stop for a wash.  That would happen the next morning at a gas station up around the corner from us where they had an automated car wash named Christ. 

You can't make this stuff up.

Until then the Monegasque Peoples would need to suffer the site of us for the day.

Brush up on your French!