It was not unexpected last evening, when M. Macron announced an extension to the lockdown until May 11th. That is another four weeks. There is no hint yet as to whether it is expected to extend beyond that period or if instead we shall be seeing a relaxation of our restrictions.
I am not very good with figures and especially not so with graphs but it looks to me as though France may not have yet hit the peak. If not yet there however, after a month of lockdown, we must be close. The hard stats for today:
Coronavirus Cases: 136,779
Deaths: 14,967
Recovered: 27,718
New cases peaked on April 3rd, at over 23,000, and yesterday’s figures (April 13th – 10 days later) give 4,188 new cases. More than 94,000 active cases (currently infected persons) are reported today.
(stats from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/france/)
Life, for us at least, goes on. Nature goes on. Last evening we had a thunderstorm and a good downpouring of rain. Conditions were sufficient to knock out our Internet connection. This morning we woke to blue sky and cooler but breezy conditions, though I was still able to go out for our daily permitted exercise in shorts and a tee shirt.
Yesterday I used this photo here, taken a week ago:
Here is the same field, taken today:
Easy to spot how well the trees are coming on.
Also coming along nicely (and I have been keeping a close eye upon it in recent days) is this Solomon’s Seal that is growing in the verge along a local chemin.
It kind of thrills me to see plants growing wild here that I used to cultivate in my garden back in the UK.
It will soon be too hot to move and we shall be longing for the time when we can leap into the van and disappear to somewhere cool and restful. I confess that I am beginning to long for a restaurant meal and am quite sad at the prospect of not going out for my birthday dinner. Even if restrictions are eased a little from the 12th May, I really cannot see restaurants being up and running a week later. No, I fear that our jaunts will held off for longer than that. It would not surprise me if we are not out and about until September at the earliest.
How fortunate we are to be living here, in the kind of place that most people must be dreaming of escaping to (rather than from) at this time! I am determined to remember at all times just how very lucky we are, how much we have, and not to become depressed about what we cannot be doing at this time. More on this subject soon…
I have done little today other than to walk the dog and write this blog post. I have made some potato salad to accompany the pizza that I am about to assemble but apart from that I have done little other than to read online news and Facebook. This is a habit that I need to break – because none of it is good or uplifting. I need to get back to my French lessons and I very much would like to unearth my spinning wheel. A whole month of being at home and I have not spun a single inch of fibre! That said, I do at least have purple hair (and a seriously poor haircut.)