Early Summer?

 

Early Summer?

in my last post I said it’s spring but now it may be early summer; the two collide here in a very short space of time. Much depends on the cold Mistral wind. If it’s not blowing or if I am out of it and in the sun it’s early summer; in it I regress to thinking it’s still only spring. Locally grown asparagus and strawberries have arrived in the shops and markets and the same goes for melons grown under glass; but maybe it can’t truly be summer until the apricots arrive. The local orchards have been full of bloom, we just have to wait a while for the fruit to follow. I’ve been putting some fruit, mangos, kiwi fruit, into small jars with fruit alcohol, sufficient for a dessert with friends. In fact extending culinary possibilities for meals with friends has become something of an obsession during the confinements. I think that will probably become increasingly important to my social life in the future.

Gardening

My gardening is progressing slowly. Watering has been the main concern as we have come through the principal time for rain here with the number of times it has rained that you could count on one hand. So I have been watering twice a week. One long trough on the balcony has been planted and one hanging basket. I still have two hanging baskets and various empty slots to fill but am struggling to find the plants I want in among the limited variety available in garden centres and markets. Some successes are showing. The clematis and sclimbing rose against the wash-house 10 yards along the road and opposite my house are in bloom as is one clematis directly opposite. At the back the cotonilla is doing its yellow nut as is the climbing rose, white spring in summer is in bloom as is a red potentilla. So far so good.

Royalty

The funeral of the Duke of Edinburgh gave me cause to reflect on what I really thought and felt about the occasion rather than what every Brit was supposed to. It was a sad occasion, obviously, particularly for the Queen, who looked bereft. But I can’t honestly say that I personally mourned. It is always sad for some when someone dies (John Donne’s No Man Is An Island) but for me it was just a stranger dying.

I’m in favour of the UK having royalty as nominal Head of State rather than a President as I think it offers more for a similar price. But I am very glad to have no part in the extensive royal family and would like to see privileges accorded to the extent of it curtailed. The bargain seems to be that royals are privileged and therefore owe a duty to the state. But duty is a cold word, hardly one to live one’s life by, and few people do. A merely dutiful husband/wife is a cold one. Most people live their lives through their emotions, ambitions and necessity. It is this, perhaps, that is at the root of the brouhaha around Harry and Megan and Diana in the past. If you are born privileged, you are supposed to choose duty above how you wish to live your life. In this respect, the royals are more an institution than a family and it is the institution that rules. I think that maybe countries such as Holland and Denmark have found a better arrangement for the modern world.

I find a bizarre contrast in this with my French friends. They always seem to be more au fait with what is happening in the royal family than I am yet would never want a royals as Head of State in France. There is privilege in France, plenty of it, but not associated with royalty and generally resented by those who don’t have it. The «peuple» in France, which can be lossely translated as the working classes, seem to me to be much more conscious of their collective power and jealous of their rights than their English counterparts and much quicker to protest if they think them infringed. The working classes in the UK seem somehow more deferrent to privilege; protest in the U>k is token; in France it is designed to disrupt. History, no doubt, accounts for these differences but my sympathies are with the French version of protest.  Show them that you mean business..

Travelling On Youtube

I’ve mentioned before that during lockdowns I’ve watched a lot more videos on Youtube, on archaeology, politics, and for cooking ideas but also to revisit places from my travelling days. Travelling is on hold for most people now (apart from the thousands coming into Heathrow during the UK lockdown) but I’ve indulged in nostalgia and been hugely disappointed. Not that I’m likely ever to see those places again but now I don’t want to. I stayed for a week on Samosir island in Lake Toba, Sumatra, a primitive paradise among kind, gentle people. There was no running water and no electricity but there were the «cleaner fish» in the lake and it was bliss. Now there are packaged tours there, with all that that implies. I stayed a similar time in a hut on an unspoiled, almost empty beach in Phuket where now there are hotels, swimming pools and loungers. I slept in a cave in Petra and danced the evening away with Bedouin around a camp fire; now it is no longer permissible to sleep in the caves and the Bedouin can no longer graze their camels and goats there. So it has been disappointing to revisit these places, even vicariously, but I am even more glad I visited them when I did.