13 April 2020 – 10 May 2020

We are now almost 2 months into confinement and on the home straight. 

As of 10 May, some 4.1m people around the world have had the virus and around 280k have died. In France, we are tracking at 176k cases and just over 26k deaths. Australia however is going amazing well with just under 7k cases and less than 100 deaths.

Lockdowns in France and many other countries have proven to be generally successful and infection curves are flattening. As the economic toll mounts and countries are hit with recessions more severe than the Great Depression, governments are now looking to bring economies out of life support whilst keeping enough of a lid on new cases to allow hospital systems not to be overwhelmed. There is much talk of inevitable second waves. 

In France, despite the fact that the daily new infection rate is still around 4k per day and around 300 deaths, it is now time for the French people and French economy to take their first tentative steps towards the new normal. Though not everyone is convinced and there is some trepidation.

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From 11 May (tomorrow), we will no longer need permission slips to go outside within 100km of your house, shops (not bars or restaurants) will reopen and individual outdoor exercise will be allowed again. Schools will open up during the same week, with a myriad of complex constraints and restrictions to enable people to get back to work. 

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The news cycle obsesses about the availability of masks (now somewhat available), testing regimes (worse than most of the rest of Europe) and maps which ‘traffic light’ each region of the country, the colour indicating whether the region will move to deconfinement and at what rate. Media reports show Spaniards and Italians hitting the streets doing exercise outside for the first time since March. 

After 8 weeks of really trying very hard to be good, cracks are starting to show in the French resolve to remain confined. There are still the usual restrictions in place (as of today) ie attestations/police checks, alcoholic gel at the grocery store, streets being disinfected, forced queuing and general social distancing ie see no-one.

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But previously empty streets and squares are now busy with people enjoying the warm spring sunshine. The police still do their checks, but you could be excused for thinking that they are starting to reassess their career choices. Many food and speciality shops, closed for the 2 months, are suddenly open again. Empty streets and night time walks are no longer solitary and often interrupted by an increasing crescendo of mopeds zipping around the city. 

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It feels a bit like life is sprouting between the cracks of confinement, just as the spring buds on the trees have exploded into green. 

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The Aixois, and the French in general, are clearly keen to see a loosening of the strict confinement measures, however the new feeling of relative freedom will take some getting used to.

Many people have literally not left the house for the last 2 months. Social contact has been limited to video calls. We give our fellow citizens a wide berth when we cross them on the street, assuming everyone is walking around with the virus. It may not have been easy, but we have become acclimated to our relatively safe little bubble and our ability to somewhat control the risks inside it. There is a recognition that the virus still circulates widely and there will be subsequent waves. It is not a question of if but where, and how bad. 

Now, in 1 day, the government says that we should don our masks, venture outside and resume some semblance of ‘normal’ life again. As parents, we will lose the control of physical proximity that we have had over the kids for the last 2 months. Many people are hesitant and scared. 

Nowhere is this fear more clear than in response to the return to school plan. The government is keen for all children, not just those with reasonable internet access, to continue their education and for parents to be free’d up to go back to work. The rules and processes proposed to support this are complex and somewhat flakey. Kids as young as 7 are expected to wear masks and keep a social distance with their friends. (Fun fact – we wore masks (available for the first time since the pandemic started) for the first time to the shops this week. It was hot, uncomfortable and itchy, resulting in an ever present need to adjust and play with it. Any move to get Jessie to wear such a mask will be doomed to failure). 

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Maskless kindergarteners will be desk bound for 6 hours a day. Extra-curricular activities will not be restarted. Start and finish times, canteen and breaks will be staggered to limit the number of kids clustering together. It all sounds difficult to implement and impossible to enforce. Some schools are refusing to re-open or at least pushing things back a week. Teachers are threatening to strike. Parents are voting with their feet and choosing to continue homeschooling.

Our school has tried incredibly hard to stay ahead of the game here and will open for students progressively through next week. There are 5 pages of procedures regarding the return to school process (just an example below). The majority of the girls’ friends will remain at home. Tellingly, so will the kids of some of the teachers we know. 

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We have decided to sit on the sidelines for a week and continue homeschooling for now. We are planning to leave France in the next 6 weeks or so (assuming we can get Bonnie and ourselves on a flight) and return to Australia which has been phenomenally successful in managing the progression of the virus. We have shifted our mindset from ‘we’re probably going to get it anyway’ to ‘we could actually avoid this thing’ – which requires us to be a bit more risk averse whilst we are here. The kids are also nervous about returning to school as well. So we will continue homeschooling for now. 

We are, however, super excited to be able to get some semblance of our lives back. Things will not be the same as before. Here or anywhere around the world. But they will be better. We will be able to see our friends and have playdates for the girls. We will be able to go to parks and forests. We will be able to bike ride, hike and run. We will be able to walk on grass, see the ocean and enjoy the springtime. These are all good things. 

The last 4 weeks have been both good and a challenge. Time has gone incredibly quickly. Routines are maintained but only with an increasing effort, as though the sheer weight of the length of confinement has started to weigh us down. 

Our ipad is looking almost as exhausted as our dishwasher, as we average some 9-10 hours a day of screen time (oops). (Side note – to be fair, our ipad has gone from the bottom of the drawer to its time in the sun. It now powers school classes, Zooms lessons, FaceTimes, piano class, HiiT classes and bike rides… in addition to Spotify, Netflix and Disney+)  

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For some reason, since we cut ourselves off from close contact with real French people, we have seen an amazing uptick in the level of French proficiency across the household. Liz has had her first French dream (a massive step towards fluency), Ellie is now chatting away like a local (albeit with more slang than actual French)  and Jessie is comfortably completing French school work. Progress has been extraordinary – whether this is due to time in-country, enforced ‘french only’ days or dedicated attention that homeschooling provides we’re not sure.

Our (well, Liz’s) dedication has also paid dividends with the run-club hitting the 5km mark with no injuries to date. Despite occasional controls by our friendly local police force, we continue to hit the streets every second day at ever increasing distance. The girls, despite initial misgivings and whinging, are now accepting and, on occasion, even enthusiastic. On other days it’s just mostly whinging.  On the days we are not running, we can still be seen following Natacha Océane on her YouTube HiiT classes (much to the amusement of our neighbours). 

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We have embarked on a new project – we have stood up the first edition of our Confinement Cooking food blog which records the majority of the recipes that we have been cooking since confinement began, digitally re-mastered for posterity. New recipes this month included a homemade custard tart and jelly to celebrate Mum’s/Grandma’s birthday, a violated chicken (whole chicken stuffed with toulouse sausage) and another whole chicken cooked ‘en croute’ with 1kg of salt (yum). 

We have continued piano classes and clearly established that the talent in the family runs straight down the Cohen gene from Liz to the kids, leaving Anthony to watch from the sidelines. Ellie is now banging out the early throes of Für Elise, Jessie Vivaldi’s Spring and Sena (completely self taught) Jingle Bells. 

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We are filling our sketchbooks with increasingly 3 dimensional but still largely non life like sketches and have taken to shamelessly plagiarizing famous works from Picasso and Dali. 

We are starting to come to terms with the fact that this period will mark ‘the beginning of the end’ of our time in France. Our target departure date is mid June, seeing us back in Australia and back at work for the beginning of July. The clock is officially ticking on our last 2 months here. 

It is hard not to be sad, even as we are grateful for the time and experiences that we’ve had. We will miss being in Europe. We love it here. We love being expats. We love the variety of languages, the history, the architecture, the natural environment and the people we have met. The colours and smells of Provence. We will miss them all and no period of time was ever going to be long enough. 

However we are coming to terms with the fact that it’s almost time to go home, and that’s exciting too. To see our family and friends again, to go to the beach, to play team sport. To go Byron Bay. Even to go back to work. We will miss France but we have plenty to be grateful for in Sydney too. 

So we are working through logistics to try and get home which, given the situation, continues to be a challenge. We are still unclear of how we’re going to get Bonnie home as a combination of covid disruption and French bureaucracy conspire to make this more complicated than it would otherwise be. Fortunately, Qatar is still operating flights to Australia so we are not yet stuck here. 

We are preparing to leave the apartment that has been our world for the last 2 months. We will be moving out of town for the last month or so into a place with a pool to enjoy the early summer warmth. 

We are preparing boxes to be shipped home.

The last stages of our trip will likely see us drive to Lyon then onto Paris or some other European airport that we can fly out of, to Melbourne for quarantine then up to Sydney… so we need to be travelling lightly. It’s amazing how much stuff you accumulate over a year, regardless of how hard you try not to. 

Most importantly, we are casting our mind to what we want to do with our last 6 weeks here. Now that restrictions (at least for local travel) will largely be lifted, how will we take full advantage of where we are and make this last period as memorable as possible. 

We can see our friends again. Go for lunches, dinners and playdates. Days are long and sunny. Grapes are growing on the vines and the lavender fields will soon be in bloom. The countryside, forests and parks will be open again for touristing, cycling and running. The Luberon beckons, as does the Sainte Victoire. The beaches of the Côte d’Azur will likely open in the next few weeks. 

6 weeks feels short in the context of a full year. It will go incredibly quickly. But we will take full advantage of it before we get on that plane.

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A quick post script here: 

On our last day of confinement, we had the excitement of all three kids waking up sick. Sena comes up first complaining of a sore stomach and a ‘beeping heart’. Ellie is next and, never one to miss the opportunity for drama, staggers up the stairs and collapses on the lounge room floor complaining of fever and hunger. Then Jessie staggers up, more wrapped-up-blanket than little girl. This is not really the environment where you can ignore vague symptoms and just soldier on, despite the fact that, of course, there are plenty of ‘normal’ bugs running around at the moment in addition to covid. 

Temperatures were taken (inconclusive, but our thermometer never goes about 35 degrees), we sought advice from the pharmacy (go to the hospital) and then called around the hospital (don’t come to Aix, go to Marseille). The idea of going to an emergency department in France’s second biggest city during a health crisis is extremely unappealing, so we continued the call around, eventually finding a 7 day a week clinic that would see us on a Sunday and had the facilities to test us for covid if required. Meanwhile Ellie is vomiting.  

We piled in the car, Sena (who by this time is feeling fine) shouting for joy at the pleasure of being in the car and out of the center for the first time in 2 months. Ellie and Jessie are more subdued. We arrived at the clinic about 10 minutes outside Aix and put the kids in face masks for the first time, immediately convinced at the futility of the school’s proposed policy of having kids in masks. Within seconds the masks were being played with. 

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The kids got checked up and fears of covid allayed. The doctor was awesome (consistent with our experience of healthcare in France – both for humans and animals – they are awesome). A fun fact was shared when we asked about testing – about 30% of the tests conducted in France return a false negative, which is nice and reassuring. We left with a sense of comfort and a pile of scripts we will likely never need including of course antibiotics.

Satisfied that no-one was going to die today, we made our way home and went back to old school remedies – noodle soup for lunch.