Lockdown in Sainte Foy ~ Week 2
Day 8: Sunday 22 March 2020
The chief of the gendarmes and five other gendarmes were in the station today. They were freely handing out €135 fines for anyone breaking the rules, and dispersed a group holding a barbecue get together. Six gendarmes enforcing law and order in Sainte Foy did appear a bit heavy handed, right up until we learned that there is a family in an apartment in CGH Les Fermes who have got the Covid 19 virus.
Local rag, Le Dauphiné, is saying that French police are reported to have issued more than 4,000 fines on the first day of the lockdown, rising to more than 90,000 by Sunday 22nd March, six days later.
I’m not surprised really. This is a virus sporting the prolific ability to jump from human to human with consummate ease. We have a new influx of people arriving every weekend, and they come from towns and cities all over the world. This is 2020 after all, and we travel and move around a lot. Well not any more!
Day 9: Monday 23 March 2020
There has been some chatter on Facebook about the attestation papers we need to carry with us each time we leave the house. Yes, it’s 2020 in mainland Europe and every time I leave the chalet I have to carry ID and my signed, dated and timed attestation paperwork. (Thing 3 which I never thought I’d ever see).
There is a risk to not carrying them. If the gendarmes catch you, it’s an immediate €135 fine. There are stories in the French news of repeated offenders becoming slightly less rich in terms of euros and their already restricted liberty. The second offence results in a €375 fine, the third €1,500, and then you get ‘taken away’ on the fourth occasion of being caught. One can only imagine what a group of miffed gendarmes might consider to be an appropriate means of educating these offenders?
Day 10: Tuesday 24 March 2020
We live in the strangest of times. Who’d have ever thought that in 2020 we would be subjected to a police lockdown in mainland Europe.
I enjoy nothing more than the company of my friends, a laugh and a joke, and a bit of banter. I am also someone who is happy with their own company. That said, I like to have the choice, and that is something which has been taken away from me. I am respectful of those around me who might have an underlying condition that I don’t know about, so I keep my two metre distance and no longer drop in on friends for a cup of tea and to catch up on all the latest news. It is starting to feel very odd.
I have fallen into a daily routine of walking up to Serge’s shop to make my daily purchase of ‘première nécessité’, my daily baguette. It doesn’t sound much, but it is social interaction and I realise that I need it to survive. It must be happening all over the world right now, but it’s a strange sight indeed to watch people hold a conversation whilst standing two metres apart. Will the French ever go back to gratuitous cheek kissing?
I chatted to Valentin at the shop this morning after he had just finished baking the day’s supply of baguettes. Around the shop, shelves are starting to empty and I’m worried that Serge might close the shop. Valentin tells me that he’s been chatting to the baker in Tignes, who told him that as soon as he starts selling less than five hundred baguettes per day, he’ll close his boulangerie. That’s a boulangerie and this is a mini supermarket, but I doubt Valentin has sold anywhere near five hundred baguettes all week. I don’t want to find out, but I ask the question anyway. He sells about thirty per day.
Day 11: Wednesday 25 March 2020
Working on the Time to Ski website is lots of fun and I really enjoy learning how all this WordPress stuff works, but it takes time. Experience has taught me never to try and do something, no matter how small it may seem, unless I have plenty of time in case something goes wrong. So this afternoon I lazed away a few hours on the balcony carrying out a few updates and adding some really cool photos for Chalet Nido.
It seems funny now to reminisce about losing a few hours powder skiing to take those photos on a bluebird day. But that’s part of what makes Sainte Foy so great, the fact that it’s so quiet and never gets skied out. I didn’t miss out, I just delayed having my fun for a couple of hours that day.
Sat on the balcony, I contemplated what changes the virus might bring about. Having an itchy beard to scratch really helps and I now wonder if this new found enthusiasm for working from home, which seems to be extended to children, might really catch on. Imagine if all the school kids who now prove that they can ‘télétravail’, and work from home, could take one week a term to perfect their télétravail-ing skills? This could totally transform the ski holiday business and make taking your family on a ski holiday much more affordable.
Day 12: Thursday 26 March 2020
One of my favourite things ever, is to go running in the forest whilst it’s snowing. There’s a carpet of untouched soft white snow underfoot, the gap between tall dark mountain conifers leads you deep into the forest, and magical snowflakes tumble gently out of the silent sky. You fall into a trance, a dream like state. It is meditative nirvana, and this was my run today.
If I could choose anywhere in the world to live right now, in these strangest of circumstances, it would be right here in Sainte Foy on the very edge of domiciled humanity. There are new wolf cubs and bouncy deer hiding in the forest, with very few people to disturb them. I have the feeling that my little window of time running through the mountain forest, gives me the exact same experience as it would have been for anybody else’s little window of time living here over the last ten thousand years.
Day 13: Friday 27 March 2020
Another evening spent brewing a wine infused stew on the stove to help stock up for the forthcoming famine. I rarely drink on my own, but these are desperate times.
Just as Samson knew his strength lay in not trimming his locks, I wonder if I have anti-virus protection in not trimming my beard? It’s early days, but the evidence suggests I do.
Day 14: Saturday 28 March 2020
Sainte Foy has taken on the feel of a ski resort out of season, only it hasn’t. Yes, most people have left now, the shops are shut (except for Serge), and it feels very quiet. But there are more people here than there should be out of season. Normally there are some family groups, a few individuals, and the odd straggler of a seasonal worker, but that’s it. This time though, we have Parisian evacuees escaping the big smoke, the odd holiday maker who has decided that life is better here than at home, wherever that might be, and visitors from surrounding villages escaping their self imprisonment to see what bargains Serge is offering today. It all adds to the surreal atmosphere.
Nobody has experienced this before, and nobody really remembers ever having to carry ID papers like this, nor subconsciously avoiding the gendarmes because life is just easier that way. What is really strange, is how we are becoming affected by the lockdown and we are changing our behaviours. People talk about hearing a helicopter and instinctively diving into the shadows. Primordial instinct is coming to the fore.
