9 March – 16 March 2020

Monday morning dawned. 

The house looked like a Chinese laundry and smelled like a ski locker with everything hanging up to dry. Skis in the shower, boots in the bathroom. Liz loved this bit about ski trips. But today, none of this mattered, because Sena was going back to school. That’s right, we would have all 3 kids at school, which meant none at home. It was very exciting.  

The alarm went off at 645. Despite the late night return from skiing all the kids (and the adults) were up in a flash, fully dressed and fed in record time. Roller blades donned and bikes mounted for the trip to the bus stop. We were first in line and Sena, possibly concerned that she would be barred entry like last week, was the first on, complete with a big smile. There were no concerns that today was a French day and no goodbyes. She was beyond ready for school to go back.  

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Kids deposited, Anthony went off on a bike ride, Liz to french class. Not a kid in sight. We went to lunch at our local favourite Entre Midi et Deux (also Bonnie’s favourite, as it basically rains steak on him each time we go there) and went home and watched a movie. It didn’t get more decadent than this. 

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Did we mention there were no kids? 

4.30pm came around too fast and we went to pick them up from the bus stop. Big smiles all around; couldn’t wait to go back the following day. The regular school temperature checks had already been normalised and conversations about how was what temperature was commonplace. Sena was smiling like she won prize.

We didn’t even have homework to get through Monday night. It just kept getting better. 

Tuesday rolled around, still with a sense of blissful normality around our little bubble in Aix. Tennis, swimming, gymnastics, cooking. Life felt normal here, the main concern was that of our ever evolving travel plans. 

(Side note: our original plans (for which we still have increasingly useless tickets) was to have the kids at school until the end of May, swing via London for a week (see Les Miserable, hang with the cousins etc) and then head off to China for a month to sight-see and maybe cuddle a few panda bears. The plan for the April holidays was 2 weeks visiting family and travelling around Israel and Jordan. Now, however, we were playing a game of chicken with border closures and travel restrictions, and it looked increasingly likely that April would be spent in France and our trip home would be direct or at least via Mexico, Hawaii or Greece). 

Come Wednesday, we had our first murmurings that, despite the facade of normality lulling us into a false sense of security, everything was not as it should be. 

Classe Verte, Ellie and Jessie’s 5 day camp scheduled for the following week. Classe Verte had been on the agenda since September and no event this year had caused such a combination of fear, anguish and excitement. We had been through denial (I’m not going!), fear (I can’t be away for 5 whole days!), acceptance (I’ll go, but I won’t enjoy it), excitement (It’s a 5 day sleepover with all my friends!) and opportunism (There’s a school dance, I need a new dress!). The girls, ultimately, were more excited than scared. We were excited for them – we hoped this would be one of those defining experiences of the year for them… even if we weren’t included! 

At 5pm we got the fateful email. Despite their best efforts with managing kids health at school this week, they could not guarantee this during Classe Verte, so were obliged to cancel it. 

Ellie’s world came crashing down in dramatic fashion. Jessie was both upset and (whilst she tried to hide it) a bit relieved. We were curious… What was so different between taking the kids’ temperatures at school or 60 kms away? 

Later than evening we heard that President Macron would be speaking to the nation the Thursday evening. No doubt we would have our answers then. Rumours of the unthinkable – that school would follow the Italian model and would be closed – were already circled. 

Thursday came around and unperturbed with events unfolding around us (and with an entirely non functioning laptop in need of some time on the PwC network), Liz and Anthony went for a long overdue day trip to Marseille to visit PwC Marseille, tour the old port and, of course, have lunch. After 25 years of not going to Marseille, it was nice to finally get down to what felt like a very big city in comparison to Aix. Despite its somewhat questionable reputation (particularly dating back to Lyon in 1998), we enjoyed wandering the streets and around the Port for a few hours whilst Anthony’s laptop was spending some quality time bonding with the PwC network for the first time in 9 months. 

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The sun was shining, yes, Italy was on fire and quarantined, but life here (all of 200 kms away) felt good. 

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Despite our optimism, we decided to do a quick ‘panic shop’ at Carrefour on the way home from Marseille. This was in fact our third such shop, over the last few weeks, meaning that if the food supply did run short (which we assured would not be the case) we would have enough to keep us going for a week or so. And wine. Plenty of wine. For the record, on Thursday afternoon, Carrefour was no less crazy than usual. 

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8pm Thursday night we were greeted with patriotic music, a dated, stock photo of the Élycee Palace and then a live cut to an immaculately coiffed Emmanuel Macron. It all felt a little communist and old school. Over the course of the next 15 minutes of rousing discourse (with some highly comical sign language and some of the most inaccurate sub titling that has ever been seen anywhere, ever, the President had a pretty simple message for the 22m people who tuned in – due to the exponential rise in COVID-19 cases across France and Europe, schools would be closed at the end of the week for at least the next 15 days, workers should look to work from home, restaurants, bars and clubs would be shut from Saturday and the whole nation needed to keep its distance from each other and come together to fight the virus (subtext: or else). 

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We opened a bottle of wine and started hyperventilating almost before the rousing music faded into the background. We were all for helping with homework and spending quality time with the kids during holidays (which we had just finished 2+1 weeks of) but we had not signed up for homeschooling. After the initial panic subsided, we reminded ourselves that we were in fact 2 parents at home, neither of whom were trying to juggle a full time, work-from-home job (or impending unemployment). Things could be a lot worse. 

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Friday came around… and other than the spectre of school closure on the horizon and the “night before email” about book week dress up the next day, everything felt good. The weather was beautiful with spring certainly on the way, Anthony went for a swim and then played tennis at school. We even had plans to go to a birthday party that night. Like every great diet, social distancing would start tomorrow … right? Or maybe after the weekend.  

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Then photos started coming through from friends at supermarkets around the area. Photos of lines going down the full length of isles, trolleys piled high with dry goods and toilet paper (Australian style) and shelves being emptied. The media reinforced the message that there was no shortage of goods, however no one listened and cleared the shelves anyway. 

(Side note here: France has no face masks and no hand sanitiser. They have not had these supplies for a few weeks now, which is not ideal considering they are two of the most effective ways of avoiding transmission. The fact that the government has not been able to sort out the supply chain for these goods is not doing them any favours in terms of building trust that they’ve got the situation under control). 

The whole thing still felt like it was happening around us, but not really ‘to’ us. 

The gravity of the situation really started to hit us at school. The place was in chaos as it tried to prepare for a minimum 2 week shutdown on 2 days notice. Teachers were in tears, some contractors, were wondering whether they would get paid and how they would make rent. Tennis lessons were cancelled and courts would be shut – the school having been threatened with criminal action should infection happen from there. 

We spent some time after lessons to hang out with friends and let the girls have a play. It would, after all, likely be the last we would see of them face to face for an as yet undefined period (allegedly 15 days, but no one believed that). 

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The vibe was sombre to say the least. 

For the last few weeks we have been running an intense hygiene campaign with the kids. Despite our best efforts, results are at best inconsistent. Wash your hands. Wash them again. Don’t touch your face. Don’t put your hands on anything. Anything. Don’t put things in your mouth. Don’t lick anything. Seriously. No, you can’t lick that post. Or the ground. Or your friend. Or the ball. Really? Did you just lick that? I can’t believe you just did that. Have you not understood a word we’ve been saying? We stepped this up and went nuclear. It had a small impact, but there was no doubt that there were truck sized holes in our defences. 

On Friday night we went along to a highly cut down version of Jean Marc’s planned fancy dress birthday extravaganza (ultimately a quiet drink with friends doing an odd dance involving feet and elbows to say Hello rather than the habitual kisses and handshakes) and basically spent the night wondering who already had the virus and trying not to get too close to the same people we had been hanging out with frequently over the last several weeks and months. It’s amazing how quickly your perspective changes. 

The birthday party of one of Ellie’s best friends had been long planned for Saturday. After much debate, we decided that we would allow her to go rock climbing with her friends, but packed her off with alcohol gel (no longer available in stores and more valuable than platinum in today’s France) and a promise that she wouldn’t touch her mouth or eat cake. Decathlon Village was filled to the brim with families happily biking, scooting and playing in the spring sunshine. 

On Sunday, we had one final event before we would step back into self isolation. One final social event (honestly, we could stop anytime we wanted to), this time with the families of Jessie’s best friends Lola, Sofia and Aer Sophie for a backyard BBQ. More funny feet dances and elbow touching and a really lovely afternoon of hanging out (at a very safe distance and with thermometers taking temps and hand sanitizes at the door). 

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We got home and started to prep for the week ahead. We planned nature walks, art history classes and excursions to the new Dali exposition at Carriers de Lumieres in Beaux de Provence. We wouldn’t just get through homeschooling, we would smash it out of the park. 

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We would be THAT family – with our 3 smiling and engaged children basking in the joy and opportunity of 2 parents presenting them unique opportunities to learn and grow in a supportive and nurturing multilingual environment. We could do this. Right? 

The Sunday night news showed that basically the whole of France went out until late Saturday night and got hammered on their last night of freedom, whilst spending the rest of the weekend crowding into parks to sleep off hangovers and enjoy the early spring sunshine. 

At the same time, it was announced that the President, unhappy with the seriousness with which the French (not exactly renowned for their ability or willingness to follow rules at the best of times) were taking the evolving crisis, would pull us all into his office for a further berating on Monday evening. 

We all felt like naughty school children about to be punished.