France is at war according to President
Macron in his televised address the other day – at war against an invisible and
elusive enemy (un ennemi invisible et
insaissisable). The view from the front line is brought to us every evening
on the 8 o'clock news, with scenes (often the same from one evening to the next)
from hospitals and care homes, helicopters, aircraft and specially adapted
high-speed trains, all taking critically ill patients from hospitals that are
full to others, all over France, that are not, but also to neighbouring German
and Swiss hospitals, interspersed with gut-wrenching interviews with admirable
and overworked medical and nursing staff.
Life behind the lines is a lot less
dramatic, even if we are constantly reminded that we are all doing our bit for
the war effort by staying at home. On the first morning of lockdown, I dutifully
filled in my attestation de déplacement
dérogatoire, wondering what we would call this marvel of French
administrative prose in English. One British journalist writing about events in
France referred to it, rather pompously, as “an exeat” – somehow, I can’t
imagine a policeman asking me for my “exeat”! But then no UK government would
dream of imposing such a constraint in the first place. An English friend wrote
that she wasn’t happy about being told what to do and what not to do; I
answered that the French weren’t either, but that they are more used to it –
and more used to finding ways around it.. That being said, it’s now almost
three weeks since the lockdown was imposed, and I have seen neither hide nor
hair of a policeman, let alone been challenged to produce my document. Keen to
make well-publicised examples of motorists fleeing down the motorway to their
second homes, they obviously don’t bother to venture into the smallish town
centre, and certainly not the side streets, of a quiet residential suburb.
And quiet the streets are. Eerily quiet. No
sound of cars driving to work in the rush hour, just the sound of birdsong
early in the morning. I even heard a seagull yesterday, obviously not taking
confinement very seriously. The hoardings
for the first round of municipal elections on March 15th, that now
seems months ago, have not been removed. Work
has stopped on most building sites, including that of a major rebuild of the
local technical college, but not, curiously, on complex and heavy lifting engineering
work to repair an embankment that subsided onto our local railway line at the
beginning of February. A dozen workers toil six days a week, with helmets and heavy-duty
gloves, but without facemasks, and hope to have finished by the time we are
deconfined. The only other sounds that float up to our open fourth floor
windows are kids tearing round the garden of our building on their bikes and a
lone teenager bouncing a basketball before practising his throws. In the road
outside, a father sets up makeshift goalposts every afternoon, quickly removed
if a car comes by, to play football with his four children.
The French are reputed to be an unruly lot
but everybody I have come across on my daily walks to the shops or around the
neighbourhood observes strict social distancing, crossing the road if they see someone
coming towards them and waiting quietly outside shops behind the floor tape markings,
one meter apart. Yesterday, I met a neighbour walking towards me on the same
side of the road. As he normally cycles to work and takes long cycle rides at
the weekend, I asked him, from a safe distance, why he hadn’t taken his bike
out, realising as I said it that nobody is supposed to stray further than 1 kilometer
from home. To my surprise, he answered “No, I wouldn’t do
anything like that” (Non, je ne
m’autoriserais pas cet écart). Would the French be as civic spirited if
there weren’t the threat of a fine? Some certainly wouldn’t, but my feeling is
that the vast majority would, a situation not very different from that of most
other countries faced with this nasty epidemic.
Municipal parks and woodlands being closed, the only
places where you are likely to meet more than one person at a time are the
shops. As our fresh food market was closed down just after the start of
lockdown, I have fallen back, like many others, on the local convenience store which
is just a ten minute walk away, as well as the local bakery; deprived of freedom
to roam is one thing, doing without a crispy baguette is quite another! After the initial panic buying, mainly
of foods like pasta and flour rather than toilet rolls (the French have their
priorities right!) the shops are now more or less back to normal. As each
palleted delivery arrives, every single employee I have ever seen at the shop descends
on the aisles, unpacking, stacking the shelves and piling up flattened boxes. French
labour laws are reputed to be notoriously inflexible but this shop, like many others,
seems to have worked effectively around their constraints.
Lockdown
started on March 17th and has now been extended in two stages beyond
April 15th. President Macron will be on nationwide TV on Monday evening to tell
us what’s next. Judging by the Chinese experience, we could be in for another
month, maybe more. With or without compulsory facemasks, still in short supply
and reserved for health care workers only?
With a massive campaign of blood testing that our German neighbours seem
to be able to organise with consummate efficiency, or without? With a “Stop
Covid” mobile phone app. designed to trace our movements, that has sparked the
predictable debate about civil liberties and the protection of privacy? As if
the very fact of confinement were not in itself a massive restriction of
personal freedom. We shall undoubtedly find out more on Monday, but these are all
areas where the French government, like many others, has clearly been caught
napping. A week ago, I made myself a makeshift facemask using a piece of cloth
and two elastic bands, on the basis of a YouTube demonstration by the US surgeon
general. A daughter-in-law has gone one better and put her sewing machine to
work for the whole family; two very professional looking facemasks turned up in
the post on Friday morning. Like most people, I’m not sure now useful if it is as
a protection from the virus, but it is psychologically comforting when you are
in a confined space like a shop or a pharmacy. As for blood testing, imagining
myself an asymptomatic carrier, I asked a nurse who came to the house
yesterday when she thought the local testing laboratory would be able to run
blood tests on request to find out who has developed antibodies and who hasn’t.
She looked blank before answering that it would take at least another two
weeks. That takes us to the end of April. Kids are supposed to go back to
school on May 4th, but that seems more and more unlikely.
We shall no
doubt find out more on Monday evening.
