Unlocked

Early morning sunshine in our garden as the nightingale sings.  The strong vertical shadow on our neighbours' tree is of the tall, thin pine by our own terrace - amazing effect!

As I finish this post I want to include a 5-minute clip of the nightingale that serenaded us all last night.

I started this at the weekend, looking forward to our first low-key meetings with friends now small gatherings are once again allowed.  Thanks to rain outdoor meetings will be difficult, so luckily this will slow down any mad rush to the beaches.

Throughout this period we have seen and heard people railing against loss of liberty.  I think most politicians make what they can of the uncertainties science serves up - science gets a bad name every time it is blamed for not having clear answers, but 'it depends' is probably the most honest reaction to every bit of scientific information you can find, and politics was invented to decide what course to follow when the answer is as usual not clearcut.  On the whole I think the level of uncertainty we have in France is rather better than what our UK friends and family are going through just now - there is a difference between a proper degree of caution and bumbling uncertainty.  Just to illustrate how difficult it is to decide things, here are two sets of charts published 5 days a part in Le Monde.  The basics - wash hands, don't hug, kiss or shake hands, stay a decent distance apart - are simple, but certainties are hard to come by.

So rather than dwelling on this, I'm starting a run-down of things we have read, listened to or watched in the past lockdown weeks.

Some films we have watched (in no particular order) mostly for the second or more time(s):

• Before you go - supposed to be one of Julie Walters’ best performances.
• Another year - a typical, excellent Mike Leigh film, with no discernible ‘ending’
• Girl with a pearl earring - an odd, slightly disjointed narration, beautifully filmed, but I kept on thinking Colin Firth should have been at Pemberley. Judy Parfitt as good as ever as a severe mother figure.  Girls and women have a tough time, and servants more so.
• Sideways - OK but underwhelming, set in Californian wine country, underlying messages seemed to be that men are better at car crashes real and metaphorical, while women make pretty good œnologues.
• La reine Margot - stopped watching after the first 20 mins because despite reasonable English subtitles we could not tell one straggly-haired princeling with beard from another. Swashes being buckled.
• A good year - enjoyable romcom, in which Russell Crowe tries to be as lovable as Hugh Grant. Passable parody of the southern French wine idyll, with typical paysan included, in which the central romance appears to have started when the boy and girl were about 6.  
• The piano - pretty striking film for acting and shooting, with a fairly dark and gruesome amputation angle, but where the most unlikely thing was that the dam piano survived its many indignities and still played in tune. Oh, and the young woman broke the hood your breath under water world record.
• Raising Arizona - Coen Bros at their best, a terrific watch and not a shred of plausibility in the plot.

More to follow