Love In The Time Of COVID19 ...

Wouldn't that make a good title for some dreary Spanish novel?

As you may have noticed, over here in Ole Yurrup we has been somewhat preoccupied with various matters of late, which goes some way to explaining my general laxity. However, finding myself with better things to do and no particular wish to do them just at the moment, now seems a good time to catch up ...

Before you feel obliged to ask, we are all - this being us, various dogs and cat - well. To be quite honest the lockdown hasn't much affected us: I've worked from home for the past seven years and we don't really practice shopping as an Olympic sport, so being confined to home and village is not that much of a hassle.

But more on that later.

For reasons which need not concern you, I had occasion to go off to Carcassonne a while back and, on the way back home, found myself spending some fifteen minutes staring at the rear end of a plumber's van in front of me which, for some reason, obstinately refused to drive off the road and into the ditch. All very well, but what I mostly remember - apart from the pressing need to push him off the road and then eat his liver raw using only a plastic spoon for the operation - was the URL that was proudly blazoned on the back of the van: www.ass-sales.fr

There was also a phone number, which - somewhat to my credit, I feel - I have not yet been tempted to ring, having no immediate need to purchase an ass.

And then, feeling desperate and in sore need of a salad, at the beginning of January I went off and bought a string bag of tomatoes - or at least, tomato-shaped red balls from Holland's finest hydroponics plants. Seven weeks later they still have no flavour (apart from a slight hint of cotton wool) and, rather to my surprise, they show no signs of wanting to rot either.

Not really being able to get out and about (apart from the totally authorised one-hour dog walk each day, which we choose to interpret to mean an hour par day per dog) we don't meet very many people, so fascinating anecdotes are not easy to find. But for reasons which escape me I recalled one of Philippe's, which he told me over a couple of (bottles of) gins a while back, and so now seems as good a time as any to dust it off ...

I think it started when we were telling tall tales about our past adventures, which for my part involved a couple of sadly unforgettable hotels in the Parisian banlieue and a number in Cameroon, which reminded him of his time in Wallis and Fotuna - when the wife of the French military attaché fell in love with him, and he would get back to his beach-side bungalow (think "Death In Paradise" here) to discover the locals sitting on his sofa watching "Les Chiffres et le Lettres" on his wide-screen TV, having emptied his fridge of beer and tinned tuna, leaving a few kilos of freshly caught lobster in exchange.

But as he said, "You can only eat lobster so many times a week before getting bored, and anyway they hardly ever left the really good stuff that they ate themselves ...".

Anyways, this was a while after that, when he had occasion to head up to Libourne, on the Gironde, and had to stay the night. Found a hotel that seemed reasonable, explained his needs and booked in. At which point the young woman behind the desk asked "OK, single bed, do you require a couverture?".

At which, he told me, he thought "what the hell? Of course I want a blanket on my bed" and promptly said so.

To be (he swore) surprised when there came a knock at the door around 11pm, and a somewhat under-dressed young woman standing outside it. She, it seems, was the "couverture".

Being in lockdown does mean that there are certain things you just cannot do, such as - for instance - head off to Carcassonne or Narbonne to buy new jeans. Let it be admitted that this is not really a major problem all things considered but it still annoys me unreasonably, because I still have an honest 28" waist and no hips to speak of, and there are very few shops that sell such things ...

And on top of that, when I do find them, I find that they're "comfort fit" ie made for fat people who'd like to believe that they're thin: 2% elastomer in the fabric so that the bloody things stretch out an extra two inches or so and after a few hours I find the waistline dangling somewhere around mid-thigh.

OK, it's a minor annoyance, but I take it personally ...

And there's another thing - back in my doubtless mis-spent youth, as some sort of testament to the urge to continue the species but not tonight thanks very much, one would occasionally often find condoms lying limp and sad in the gutters.

I am not entirely sure that finding disposable latex gloves in their place is actually an improvement, but I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong.

Whatever, lockdown = social distancing (and somewhat to my surprise, the French actually respect this, by and large, very well) = no markets, so no fresh fruit or veg. Wailies! Luckily the market gardener at Puicheric has been allowed to remain open so some of my wants have been assuaged, but frankly there's only so much asparagus I can eat ... luckily, some markets have now reopened, although your options are somewhat limited.

Of course the supermarkets are still open, with varying rigour as to how many people are allowed in at a time and under what circumstances, but I do not like supermarket vegetables at the best of times (for flaccid greens thinking wistfully of days weeks ago when they were fresh and erect do nothing for me) and in any case until recently you could find neither yeast nor flour for love nor money - godnose why, were people really planning on spending three months locked up doing baking?

Because that would rather surprise me, if true.

Also, despite being gloved and masked, every time I head boldly off to get some of the pure necessities of life I come back home with an admittedly purely psychosomatic dry nose and itchy throat, which is annoying.

But mostly, bars are closed ... but at the time of writing it is June 1^st, and so tomorrow I may be able to enjoy a glass of rosé after the (small) market at Olonzac before repeating the experience with Philippe, here at Moux.

Mind how you go, now.