Monday, August 9, 2021

Paris 2024.


We watch a little of the Olympics closing ceremony. The Tokyo organizers can finally relax. The games could have been a damp squib but proved to be tailor made for lockdown viewing. The 'handover' celebrations in Paris seem to have been 60% mask on, 40% mask off. 

Monday morning in deepest,deepest France profonde. Sophie is loaded into the back of the dog car for a drive down to the stream for a drink . While she slurps happily away we watch the dragon flies. Dozens ( scores ?) of them up and about in the break of day sunlight. Sophie is much more interested in the scents left by the streams overnight visitors - badgers, deer, foxes, hare and who knows what else ? She spends a full ten minutes sniffing every leaf and branch. She will not be hurried.


The fields next to The Rickety Old Farmhouse at their peak. Sunflowers in full bloom....


... fields of Queen Anne's lace sprouting where the wheat has been harvested  .... 


... and a view into the valley that shows (yet ) another front is scudding in from the Bay of Biscay.


At the cafe the e-scanner isn't working. The hard copy of our vaccine certificate is checked by the lady who takes our order. It seems there were a couple of thousand folks out on the streets of Toulouse yesterday complaining about the governments policy on vaccination.  Scale that up nationwide and there may have been 0.1% of the population out and about protesting. In comparison 15% of the French  have signed up to be vaccinated in the last two or three weeks since the President announced the new regulations. Soon the French vaccination rate will catch up with the UK's. This morning there is an extremely impassioned lady on the breakfast radio saying her human rights are being violated and that showing a Covid certificate is like wearing a yellow star. Is it politically incorrect to think that the two could not be more different ?


 

6 comments:

WFT Nobby said...

Lovely photos of the sunflower enhanced landscape with morning.
Sophie looks pensive in the car boot.

Tigger's Mum said...

On your last question, agree couldn't be more different. One status is about choice and the other an accident of birth. Polar opposites.

Yamini MacLean said...

Hari OM
Ohhh, that last view... the scenes from Paris caused me to gasp. Never mind the lack of masks en masse - where was the distancing??? Given most there were unlikely to have been vaxxed - or was that part of the deal for attending? As for the radio lady - idiotic comparison. YAM xx

Coppa's girl said...

Oooh, so many lovely scents by the stream. Lucky Sophie - Inca is green with envy! This morning she just had car tyres and the odd stinky lamp post to enjoy!
The lady (is it politically correct to refer to her as that - there's probably a protest in there somewhere!) on the radio, no doubt considers herself striking a huge blow for freedom of choice. How ignorant she is, and obviously knows nothing of the tragic history behind the wearing of a yellow star. The same female would probably be complaining just as vocally if she was denied vaccination. So many of these protesters protest for the sake of it.
Lovely sun flowers.

Diaday said...

Sophie, sunflowers, sky, and snippets of life from deepest France profonde...what a lovely way to start this week.

William Schmitt said...

I can only imagine how happy the Jews would have been to trade their yellow stars for a shot of the vaccine.