Bonjour from Paris
 
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Bonjour from Paris

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Posts: 55
(@health-seeker)
Joined: 3 years ago

Many thanks Teebs for your informative and witty updates. Even before the world went weird, a twenty mile wide strip of water and a language difference made for an extraordinary lack of knowledge about Macronland here to your north. Now that everything is filtered through the official narrative, it's even more difficult to get a full picture, so any enlightenment, French or otherwise, is most welcome.

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Posts: 243
Topic starter
(@teebs)
Joined: 3 years ago

CHRISTMAS - YES
NEW YEAR - NO

So, a week or so after Monsieur le President graciously announced that the new curfew that comes in on 15 December will be lifted on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve, his bouncer-cum-prime-minister announced that yes, it will be lifted on Christmas Eve, but will be in force at 8 pm on New Year's Eve.

This is because they are worried about "the numbers". Speaking of which, I suspect that the number associated with the IQ of Monsieur Castex is roughly equivalent to the number of hairs on top of his head. (Readers are invited to google images to verify.)

Happily, we were personally not too bothered by this, as we heard the news while enjoying an elicit night out in a bar-restaurant that is not supposed to be open. We usually have Christmas dinner on Christmas eve, rather than lunch on Christmas Day, and as usual it will be at home with the usual attendees. (But this year I may try to convince a few people to join in a board game - maybe Risk or Monopoly - and just because some minister said they may be risky. So there.)

The lack of curfew will obviously help people get home at night but, if there had been such annoying interference, we could have switched to Christmas Day lunch instead.

New Year's eve, however, is a different matter. Now, we do not usually go out for New Year's Eve and avoid the mayhem. Our usual routine is dinner and a small bar-tour and back home by about 10 or 11. This year we may just have to start earlier and finish earlier, and there was a lively discussion at the bar on Friday night about how people were going to get around this latest round of interfering, busybody nonsense.

The obvious solution, already the subject of serious planning by the younger generation, is sleep-overs: party all night, and crash-sleep if you have to, and then tumble home early in the morning. Alas, I fear I am past my "all-nighters" age.

The landlord at the establishment we were visiting on Friday was not too bothered. He planned to close around 9 or 10 anyway on New Year's Eve because he too had a private party he was going to attend. But nobody was happy at being forced home at 8 pm, especially from an elicit bar-restaurant that is not supposed to be open in the first place. After all, if you are going to do law-breaking, do it properly and in style.

So, the general solution is he will just run his speakeasy as usual until around 9 or 10. If, on the way home, he is stopped and asked where he is going, he will say he was reacting to a report of a suspected break-in at his closed establishment. That is certainly a valid reason to be out and about. And, he did have a break-in over the summer and still has a cracked window to prove it. But of course there is no question of him escalating the matter beyond a simple fib to a nosey copper. After all, an ethical campaign of law-breaking needs some moral compass, like Robin Hood had for example.

In the coming days I will be touring the other rogue establishments I know of, and finding out what their underground plans are.

And so, as my previous posts show, a kind of normal life is carrying on with the government induced paranoia increasingly diverging from everyday life. Even the conversations at these speakeasy bars hardly touch on the "corona crisis". It is normal cheerful banter about local gossip, children, pets, food, drink, shopping tips etc. And, thankfully, none of us are TV celebrities who run the risk of being hounded and photographed everywhere we go.

In the meantime, apparently worried that people may not be so afraid anymore (they are not) the hysteria is being ratcheted up with a "mass testing" programme being rolled out nationwide tomorrow, Monday 14 December. I never really understood the point of having a medical analysis done (putting to the side its reliability for a minute) for a viral infection that is (1) largely harmless for over 99% of carriers and (2) incurable anyway. It is like these covid-mad people live in a parallel universe that is increasingly divorced from reality. For them, every particulate of coronavirus has to be sought out, catalogued and labelled. For what purpose? I cannot imagine. Oh ... hold on ... maybe it is just about feeding more data into "the numbers"?

And here is a word that has been quietly ignored: "carriers". If you have a virus but are not symptomatic you used to be described as a "carrier". But perhaps that is not dangerous enough for the current hysteria. You need to be "infected" and then you count as a "case".

REPORT FROM TURKEY

No point starting a new thread. This is just an example.

What few people in Western Europe appreciate but most do not, is the impact of covid-policies here on the rest of the world. In a nutshell: many countries around the world just copy by facsimile what western European governments do. A huge amount of damage is being done around the world as a result.

A friend in Trabzon, northern Turkey, was seriously pi**ed off when they shut down the bars and restaurants there, in line with many western countries. Then, a few days ago, he heard on the local grapevine that one establishment, in a hotel, was quietly open. He and his good lady went over and gave the correct credentials via the private introduction. They were escorted to a nice dining room overlooking the Black Sea. The waiter quietly asked for their ID and took copies saying he will file these at the hotel reception so, if anyone asks, they are staying at the hotel.

They had a lovely lunch and plan on repeat visits.

All around the world, it seems people are more enterprising than various ministers, secretaries of state and public health "experts". While governments are officially insistent on quarantining the healthy, a growing fraction of that large majority are tending to ignore the governments. No surprise.

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Posts: 243
Topic starter
(@teebs)
Joined: 3 years ago

"CURFEW"

So, it appears that as of Tuesday there is supposed to be a nation-wide curfew in France from 8 pm to 6 am.

Last night we decided to visit one of our friendly speakeasies near the city outskirts. Being a pragmatic sort of person, I took the curfew as an excuse to start early and was sat down with my first beer around 4:30 😀

As the time approached 7:30 we sort of wondered we should start moving home. She left and I decided it was my civic duty to finish a pitcher of wine that another customer had bought us. After all, it would be bad manners to allow a gift to go to waste. So, I left maybe a few minutes before 8, and the sight that met me outside:

Tons of people out on the street, the main supermarket open and doing a roaring trade and the peripherique (the Parisian M25, smaller around the inner city) blocked with traffic.

Curfew?

I consulted a fellow law-breaker, loitering outside the bar with a cigarette and he explained
(I stopped bothering to get information from the media or "official" sources a while back):

Prior to the curfew, people needed to fill out a form saying why they were out, at any time of day. It is actually quite easy to do and available on a phone-app. I had given up weeks ago because nobody ever asks for it. Now, with the "curfew", you do not need this form between 6 am and 8 pm but, if you want to go out between 8 pm and 6 am, you fill it in and it has all sorts of reasons such as "shopping for home needs" and, of course, "walking the dog".

So, next time you read some screaming headline about "France under curfew", now you know what is really happening.

However, I strongly suspect that around the sexier parts of town - say the Champs Elysees or around the Eiffel Tower, rules may be more strictly enforced. Luckily, we cannot afford property prices in those lofty environs.

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Posts: 1539
(@miahoneybee)
Joined: 4 years ago

It's always good to hear your take on everything teebs.
😀 🥂🍷🍾

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Posts: 243
Topic starter
(@teebs)
Joined: 3 years ago

I forgot to add ...

When I arrived at the establishment in question, shortly after 4 pm, I was confronted by the landlord saying he had run out of beer, due to some brisk business that day.

Apparently, earlier in the day he had catered for a wake and was half-complaining how the widow and mourners had put a dent in his provisions. Thus I was left with a coffee while he ran across the road to restock and when the first lager landed, it was not as cold as usual. I was then comforted by the words of our great political leaders, that we all need to make some sacrifices in these "exceptional times" (of crises of their making, that is).

So, such rogue establishments are not just indulging the rogue characters who frequent them, but are, in their way, providing social support services. Seriously, there is little doubt that widow was better comforted by being able to have that wake in this place, rather than being forced to go home to face more memories. And she - being an older person apparently at greater risk than others and in whose name the rest of the population is being deprived of a normal life - should have the power to make that decision and take responsibility for her health, just as she did yesterday.

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