Day #3

Don’t ask me where Day 2 has gone. It vanished so fast.. But here I am, under glorious sunshine, with temperatures tickling the 70 Fahrenheit mark. And Red Pike is not to be seen, no more than the burbling sound of brooks running down the fells is to be heard. As ever with Parisians, when the going gets tough, many of them (including myself) have retreated to Bordeaux. The French government did that during WW1 and WW2, so if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me. Except I can boast local roots. We have an extension of the firm here, and this is where I read law at University, some of it in French, some of it in English. Afterall, few Brits can boast understanding the old language of Gascony, which is neither French nor Spanish, but a variant form of the Occitan dialect (actually, I don’t catch all of it, but overall, it makes more sense to my ear than, say, German or Greek, which I really regret for the latter).

So my Corona Days have started here, out in the Bordeaux backwoods, all legal guns blazing, ready to play the gentleman-lawyer in the middle of the pine forest of southern Gironde. Of course, some will say that townies should have stayed in their bug-ridden cities, rather than spread the disease all over the place. The same is being said in Britain of Londoners invading the Hamps./Barks,. border, or any other part of the country. Mankind at its best, the “kind” bit of the word sounding very odd indeed, even assuming it has a different meaning…

So, to Hell with those mentalities. I was in this house when the French President declared a war was going on, just days before that very gloomy Monday and Day #1 started. I have returned, not invaded. And anyway, just like my childhood walks around Buttermere, how dare anyone tell me where home is...  

Jerome CASEY ©, 2020, all rights reserved