Week 3
Day 15: Sunday 29 March 2020
The clocks went forward during the night. Unfortunately, they only leaped forward one hour. I was rather hoping to wake up in June with it all over!
Day 16: Monday 30 March 2020
It snowed early this morning. Running uphill on fresh snow is nature’s treadmill. You can run your heart out without moving forward very quickly.
The fresh snow, and lack of human traffic, is the perfect backdrop to the beautifully drawn out animal tracks to be found on the mountain today. Deer tracks bound across the slope looking for a steep edge to dive over, fox paws have dotted their trails in furtive search of I know not what, and the prize today was some fresh wolf tracks. Wolves make a single line using the paw print in front to save energy. Several wolves will use the same paw prints, so you don’t necessarily know how many are watching you. Obviously I didn’t follow them!
Day 17: Tuesday 31 March 2020
Today I am puzzled. It was another glorious day in the mountains. The morning sky presented its full palette of colours, the sun lit up the snowy mountain tops, and a few birds were tweeting the arrival of spring. It was the perfect day for a little self indulgence, so I treated myself to a reread of one of my Astérix books, ‘Astérix et la Transitalique’. Cue amazement. Arriving ironically on page 13 was ‘l’aurige masqué’, the masked charioteer, ‘Coronovirus’. If only Astérix and Obélix were around to help us today!
Day 18: Wednesday 01 April 2020
This morning I would have been an easy target for any April fool pranksters out there, had we been allowed to mingle and prank each other. In this lockdown world my calendar has been erased. There are no weekdays, and no weekend days. There are no weekend changeovers to manage, nor any football scores to follow, so weekends no longer exist. There are just days. There is daytime, and there is nighttime. I rarely know what day of the week it is these days, and I genuinely thought that there were a few more days left in March. Thought to self – Would it count as an April Fools’ trick to tell someone it was the first of April if it wasn’t?
Thankfully, with social distancing, there is some immunity to France’s long held tradition of ‘Poisson d’avril’ day, or ‘stick a paper fish on someone’s back’ day. It’s an interesting, if not a little odd, custom that out friends this side of the Channel engage in, but they do. The idea of this giggle-worthy prank is to stick a paper fish on someone’s back without them knowing. Kids love it!
Day 19: Thursday 02 April 2020
Self isolation could be bad news for the razor manufacturing industry as men around the globe move towards a bearded hermit existence. I allow myself to watch the news for a couple of hours each day, and everybody seems to be télétravail-ing and working from home these days. Interviews are carried out with whiskery people on tv screens inside tv screens inside my tv. Perhaps there’s a razor shortage in the shops and men are saving their supply for when the lockdown is lifted, but somehow I doubt it. For once, I could be on point with my fashionably unshaven look, but again I doubt it. However, it cuts a few minutes off performing my ablutions each morning, which I now happily add to my now extended breakfasting regime!
Day 20: Friday 03 April 2020
There are noticeably more people in Sainte Foy today. There are cars with Parisian number plates which I haven’t noticed before, and people who I do not recognise but still say hello to. As is my custom, I say a quick “bonjour” to anyone I see, (whilst respecting the social distancing guidelines), and more often than not, any new face replies in that clear and quick paced accent favoured by those living in France’s capital city. (I should perhaps clarify ‘clear’ as it is an adjective which applies to my ear and reflects how I learned a lot of my French from watching the French news.)
Bang! It then hit me why I was followed up the hill by the gendarmes last week. I have a Bordeaux number plate on my car! They would have been wondering what I was doing here. All cars in France have a ‘plaque d’immatriculation’, registration plate with a number on it telling you which department it comes from. My car is registered to my address in Sainte Foy, but I bought it in Bordeaux when I was there learning French there, and the number plate portrays its origins.
Day 21: Saturday 04 April 2020
It was another beautiful day in Sainte Foy, and it should have been the last changeover weekend of the season. The weather is perfect for this last week. There is glorious sunshine, plenty of fabulous snow, and the nights are drawing out to let us enjoy more time on the mountain. For sure, it is spring conditions now, with fabulous sugar snow in the afternoon, and for those who like to grab a suntan while enjoying restaurant (or bar) experience, this is perfect. Sorry, what am I talking about, the resort is sadly closed. The lifts are quiet now, they haven’t moved for a fortnight. The bars are silent, locked up and closed for business. There’s no laughter, no people, and no excited shouting from children on the luge slope. There’s just the threat of Covid-19 and a large fine!
