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…