Back to School Ennui
This year I did something I almost never do - I really unplugged for most of the last two weeks, spent in the Provence-Alps bit of France. And that’s kept us away for a bit.
Actual time spent with family - flanneuring around brocantes. Reading Graham Greene books by the small pool in a priory-turned-flats, in an unassuming working-class village a few miles from St Remy-in-Provence. Walking around Glanum, an amazing (Celto-Ligurian, then possibly Phoenician, then Greek, then) Roman city built around a sacred spring in a mountain pass, abandoned in 260 CE and forgotten for 1600 years.
We needed the break, and not just from constant climate/fascism doomscrolling. It was a bit poignant. We’d just finished burying my mother-in-law, saw one of our boys mark his 21st birthday, and saw the youngest turn 18 and nervously look forward to heading off to uni.
It’s a very down-to-earth village with few international tourists, despite its connections with painters Van Gogh and Chaubaud, and writers Fredric Mistral and Charles-Henri Rieu. Normally we go a bit earlier, to be there for the ‘Manifestation Taurine’ non-lethal bull-runs/waterfights that crowd the local calendar around August 15th1.
One of the year-rounders explained that in Provence, the weather generally clicks into an unsettled period for a couple of weeks. This year proved to be a bit more unsettled than normal. On 1st September the area got a quarter-year of rain in a couple of hours.
Here was Cassis, down the road:
The weather was bad enough that local schools across the region delayed their reopening by a day to account for risks of flooding and damaging winds.
Refreshingly, compared to most UK or US media, the centrist newspaper La Provence does not shrink from citing “dérèglement climatique” [climate disruption] as contributing to more extreme weather. One of the articles above notes the extreme Mediterranean water temperatures as contributing to more extreme rainfall. In another, a teacher recalls that the series of European heatwaves - one of which resulted in some 2,300 heat-related deaths - were only a few weeks ago.
La Provence isn’t left-leaning like Libération or Le Monde - it’s bankrolled by conservative Catholic billionaire Rodolphe Saadé.
Coming Up
The rest was really needed, but we’re fizzing with interviews and stories we’re excited to be sharing with you through the autumn as we head into our third year of this.
Thanks for all of those who’ve come along for the ride so far.
And because people want a diversity of platforms, you can now find us (and support our work) at Patreon, and follow us on BlueSky or LinkedIn.
For reasons I’m not clear on they all fall around the time of the Feast of the Assumption, aka “Beam Me Up Mary” day in our house.
