Lockdown? What lockdown? Seen on a riverside walk yesterday morning.
We are now at the midway point in the current lockdown, the third that France has gone through. When announcing the new restrictions at the end of March, President Macron said, ‘From mid-May, we will start to open again’, and it looks increasingly likely that there will be some relaxing of measures by the middle of next month. According to the magazine Le Point, the government’s plan is to allow café terraces to begin to reopen from Monday 17th May, with cultural venues such as museums and tourist sites also opening at this point. The opening of café interiors and restaurants is provisionally set for some time between 1st and 15th June. If this plan comes to pass, it will put us almost exactly a month behind the UK, who saw their own current lockdown gradually coming to an end with the opening of schools, ‘non-essential’ shops, and pub gardens on 12th April.
Comparisons between the two countries are complicated, because the UK’s third lockdown, which started in January, was much more stringent than France’s current one. One sensed then that the French government were pleased that their own handling of the situation (for instance, by not having a Christmas easing of restrictions as in the UK) had enabled them to avoid a similar January close-down. However, four months is a long time in politics, and the situation is very different today. The vaccine campaign in the UK led to a significant drop in the numbers of both cases and fatalities, whilst the relatively slow vaccine roll-out here, coupled with the arrival of several new variant strains of Covid-19, has led to figures going in the opposite direction.
M. Macron is reported to have been reluctant to impose a third lockdown until the worsening statistics made one clearly unavoidable. Faced with a disenchanted electorate and a long re-election campaign, he was keen to administer an effective medicine without making it too difficult to swallow. The current ‘partial’ lockdown is the result.
Like most people, I was glad of the lighter restrictions, with no documents to fill in whenever you leave the house, and more freedom to travel and exercise. At the same time, there is the nagging suspicion that it might have been better to bite the bullet now and have a complete lockdown, in order to benefit later on. There is also the feeling that the new rules are illogical. I can weave my way through the crowded street market but not sit in a cinema with carefully separated seats. I can stand with other people eating at a fast food kiosk but not sit on a terrace eating a proper meal. I can drink a Coke in the street but not a beer. I can buy books and records and patio furniture (garden centres are open) but not clothes or a kitchen table. Any business that does repairs can stay open, so you can have your shoes mended, but you can’t buy a new pair.
These are all minor inconveniences, and hopefully all of this will pass fairly soon. However, the future is far from clear. The journalist John Lichfield does an excellent job analysing the progress of Covid-19 in France and its treatment. In his latest bulletin, he talks of steadily improving vaccine roll-out figures and a dramatic drop in care home deaths, from 1,300 a week in November to 50 a week now. Overall, there are signs that a plateau has been reached. Numbers in acute care have been stable at around 5,900 for five days.
However, the third wave of the pandemic in France – 82% UK variant – is still at a high level, with over 30,000 cases and 300 deaths a day. The grim statistic of 100,000 Covid deaths in France was passed during the week. New scare stories about vaccine risks and variant strains appear almost daily. The government will have to balance very carefully the political desirability of relaxing current restrictions against the risk of increasing the spread of the disease.
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Food for thought
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One evening this week, we rewatched Peeping Tom, the film that more or less finished the career of director Michael Powell. On its release in 1960, the critics queued up to express their outrage. Caroline Lejeune in The Observer described it as a ‘beastly film’, whilst the Daily Express, subtle as always, said it was ‘more nauseating and depressing than the leper colonies of East Pakistan, the back streets of Bombay, and the gutters of Calcutta’.
Since then, the film has been reassessed and is now regarded as a classic of British cinema. It all seems very tame now, and it’s difficult to see what all the fuss was about. I’ve watched it several times and nearly always see something new to appreciate in it. This time it was a shot of the newsagent in Rathbone Place, where Mark, the eponymous peeping Tom, works.
29 Rathbone Place W1.
When I was young, every corner newsagent looked like this, festooned with adverts for cigarettes and ice cream. If you click on the image above, it should open in another window. Enlarge it, and you can just about make out a cigarette machine above the Wall’s sign on the right of the picture. These were once very common, as were machines which for a pre-decimal sixpence would dispense a carton of milk.
The pub that features in the film is the Newman Arms in Rathbone Street, a place where I’ve wasted many a happy hour. As well as Peeping Tom,it’s noteworthy for two other reasons. First, it was the pub on which George Orwell, once a regular there, based the Proles’ pub in 1984. Second, in about 2010, it was the first pub in London where I came across the vile practice of allowing people to ‘reserve’ tables. In a public house! I was outraged!
Mind you, I had the last laugh. I stormed out, and ten years later left the country, never to return. That’ll teach them.
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Things I’ve learnt this week:
The symbol of the Alzheimer Society of Canada is the forget-me-not.
In 1986, Michael Foot MP was made the Chair of a disarmament committee. The Times headline ran: ‘Foot Heads Arms Body’.
The Swedish expression ‘Skita i det blå skåpet’ is used to describe someone who has embarrassed themselves or has taken something too far. It literally means ‘to shit in the blue cupboard’.
Postcards from Poitiers 