In which the park turns to toast and the pints multiply
An unhurried 9:30, a building that plays tricks on the eye, and an afternoon that never quite decided to go back indoors.
Nine-thirty in the morning is, by the standards of any self-respecting holiday, practically the crack of dawn — and yet there we were, assembled outside at the appointed hour with the grim discipline of people who had, at some point the night before, agreed to this in writing. The plan was modest: walk toward Marble Arch, pause for coffee and the sort of small breakfast that exists purely to justify the coffee, and arrive in reasonably good order. Modest plans, executed exactly as drafted, are rarer than one would like, so this alone felt like a small triumph.
We were booked for Frameless at 11, and turned up, naturally, an hour early — a very British instinct that the venue rewarded by simply letting us in at 10 anyway, as though it had been expecting our impatience all along. I won’t attempt to explain what Frameless actually is, partly because I’m not sure a straight explanation would survive contact with the experience, and partly because some things are better arrived at unbriefed. What I will say is that it reorganises the business of looking at art into something genuinely novel, and that I intend to do it again — in London next time, or perhaps in Paris, where I gather the same trick is on offer.
Some experiences resist explanation on principle. Frameless is one of them, and I respect it too much to spoil the trick.
Aperitif was with our friend Gary, booked for 12:30 at the Chesterfield Arm pub ” in this case, being a technicality, since the entire arrangement took place resolutely outdoors. It was warm enough that being indoors would have counted as a lifestyle choice nobody was prepared to make.
To get there we cut through Hyde Park, which was not, as advertised, green. It had gone the colour of digestive biscuits, scorched into a uniform yellow-brown I don’t think I’ve ever seen on it before — the sort of thing that makes you briefly reconsider what “typical British summer” is supposed to mean.
We arrived early at the pub — early appears to be the running theme of the day — and got a couple of real ales in before Gary turned up, at which point it became, inevitably, round two. Round two, for reasons I can’t fully account for, didn’t sit quite right with me, so the diplomatic solution was to relocate entirely: a couple of hundred yards down the road to a second pub, also outdoors, also perfectly content to let the time simply happen to us.
And that, really, was the whole of the busy morning: a pint in hand, the news exchanged in no particular order, and the world going by at exactly the pace it’s supposed to when there’s nowhere else you’re meant to be. Some days are built around a single spectacular thing. This one had its spectacular thing early — a building that reinvents how you look — and then had the good sense to spend the rest of its hours on nothing more ambitious than good company and cold beer. That was however just the beginning
In which the Stansted Express delivers us safely, the hotel room does not, and Sussex Gardens redeems everything with real ale
There is a particular kind of optimism that grips a traveller stepping off a plane at Stansted, and it lasts, in my experience, for roughly one hour — which is, coincidentally, exactly how long it takes to get to Paddington. The Stansted Express carries you gallantly as far as Tottenham Hale, at which point you are handed over to the Victoria line, which today performed the extraordinary feat of being almost entirely empty. A Tube carriage with room to breathe is, for a Londoner, roughly as common as a sunny bank holiday, and I treated it with the appropriate reverence. A change onto the Circle line at Kings Cross, and there we were: Paddington, bags in hand, illusions largely intact.
The illusions did not survive the hotel. I had, in my head, been picturing something modest — a glorified B&B, all doilies and a landlady called Doreen. What we got instead was a large, unmistakably “proper” hotel, five minutes from the station, the kind with a lobby and a lift and a certain corporate self-assurance. The room itself was comfortable enough, and thoroughly, reassuringly English — cosy, a kettle standing at the ready like a small brass sentry — but it was also, without exaggeration, one of the smallest rooms I have ever occupied. Possibly smaller than a prison cell, though I confess my sample size for prison cells is mercifully limited. No matter. We had not crossed the Channel to admire square footage. Bags down, and the pub crawl could begin.
We managed four pubs, four pints, four different real ales — a modest itinerary by some standards, a triumph of pacing by ours.
The undisputed champion of the evening was an old friend: London Pride, from Fullers, poured exactly as memory insisted it should be. Each pub had its own particular charm, that unmistakable Englishness that no amount of French café culture quite prepares you for — the low beams, the carpet that has clearly seen things, the general sense that everyone has been sitting in the same seat since 1987. And the area itself, around Sussex Gardens, turned out to be a genuine delight: leafy, handsome, faintly posh, the sort of neighbourhood that makes you reconsider your low expectations of the hotel entirely.
We closed the evening as any self-respecting expedition should, with a large whisky by way of nightcap, before retiring at what passed, on UK time, for a reasonable hour — though my body, still stubbornly set to CET, informed me it was rather later than that. No matter. The room may be small, but sleep, thankfully, does not require much space.
The Great Stansted Rendezvous: A Father-Son Weekend
Part 1
Every family has its own private cartography — the places that mean more than the map admits. For us, that place is London. My wife hails from south of the river, all three of our children first drew breath in English hospitals, and we spent fourteen years living in the capital’s leafy outer rings before decamping to Germany. So when it came to engineering a rare weekend alone with our eldest son, the maths were almost embarrassingly simple.
Here’s the problem we were solving: I live in the south of France, he lives in northern Germany, and roughly 1,500 kilometres of Europe sit stubbornly between us. Meeting in the middle would have meant convening in some featureless service station car park outside Reims, which — while thematically appropriate for a father-son bonding exercise — lacked a certain something. London, on the other hand, offered actual charm, and the added bonus of feeling less like a “compromise” and more like a homecoming for both of us.
The logistics, for once, cooperated beautifully. Two flights, two different corners of the continent, one runway — Stansted — and a twenty-minute window between our respective landings. It’s the kind of scheduling coincidence that makes you briefly believe the universe is rooting for you.
There was, of course, a catch. There is always a catch, and its name is Ryanair.
I want to be clear: I have sworn off Ryanair more times than I’ve sworn off carbs, and with roughly the same success rate. Every single time, I board the plane muttering the same solemn vow — never again — and every single time, a few weeks later, I find myself wedged into a seat with all the legroom of a filing cabinet, wondering how I got here. The answer, infuriatingly, is always the same: convenience. Our local airport is ten minutes from home and Ryanair treats it like a personal fiefdom, running routes that make every other airline look like it’s not even trying. I would happily pay more — genuinely, gladly, wallet open — for the privilege of a flight that doesn’t charge me extra to breathe recycled air in a seat that reclines approximately zero degrees. And yet, here we are again.
So that was the plan: two men, two flights, one low-cost airline’s relentless grip on my travel habits, and a city that has quietly become a second — or is it third? — home for our family. All that was left was to actually get there.
Part 2
There is a particular flavour of self-inflicted irony reserved for the traveller who arrives at the airport in excellent time, only to be rewarded with a delay. I had, with uncharacteristic discipline, allowed myself more than enough margin to reach Carcassonne airport, park, breeze through the terminal, and still have time to contemplate the vending machine’s questionable coffee offering. And it was at precisely that moment of smug punctuality that the departure board delivered its verdict: delayed.
Not delayed by how much, mind you. Just delayed. A single, unadorned word, offered without context, without an estimated new time, without so much as an apologetic asterisk. This is, I have come to understand, a house speciality of Ryanair’s — a sort of ambient uncertainty designed to keep the passenger in a permanent state of low-grade vigilance, checking and re-checking a board that has nothing further to say to them.
Naturally, I did what any self-respecting modern traveller does when official channels go quiet: I went looking for the truth myself. A quick check of the incoming aircraft’s progress told me what the airline wouldn’t — the plane that was, in a hour or so, to become our plane was currently running about thirty-five minutes behind its own schedule. Simple deduction suggested our delay would inherit the same number, give or take. It’s not exactly flight tracking as an act of faith, but it beats staring at a board that refuses to commit to an opinion.
All is well and on time on his side.
My son, meanwhile, was living in an entirely different meteorological reality. A text arrived from somewhere over northern Germany or thereabouts, reporting calm seas: his flight was on schedule, no drama, nothing to report. I couldn’t decide whether to be reassured or faintly offended on his behalf — the two of us, aiming for the same twenty-minute rendezvous window at Stansted, and only one of us apparently subject to the airline gods’ sense of humour.
Which, of course, is exactly the kind of asymmetry that makes a father-son trip worth writing about. He gets the smooth flight; I get the material.
Part 3 to follow, once we discover just how much thirty-five minutes actually cost us, and whether that twenty-minute rendezvous window survives contact with reality.
Part Three
Fire from Above, London Below
There was, just as we waited for the plane to land, an unscheduled bit of theatre laid on for the passengers. In the near distance, smoke rose lazily from yet another field doing its best impression of a Provençal summer — which is to say, catching fire again. Within minutes a Dash plane from the Sécurité Civile arrived on cue, banking low and dusting the blaze with a generous cloud of red retardant powder, looking for all the world like a crop-duster with a grudge. A helicopter, not to be outdone, hauled in its own water container and added its contribution to the general dampening of French real estate. Better than the in-flight film, and it cost nobody a euro.
The fire was reported in the local newspaper
Then, as if a stage manager had called time on the show, our plane simply landed. Boarding took a brisk thirty minutes — practically a personal best for any airline — and we were off to Stansted.
An uneventful flight — which, at my age, is precisely the sort I’ve learned to applaud.
My pre-ordered gin and tonic arrived with the sort of promptness usually reserved for royalty, delivered the moment the plane deigned to level off at 30,000 feet. I settled into an episode of a French series smuggled onto my phone via Netflix, and before I’d properly worked out who had betrayed whom, it was time to begin our descent — forty minutes behind schedule, because Stansted apparently runs on its own private clock.
The airport, it turned out, had invited everyone else in Europe to arrive at the same moment. I set off at a brisk trot through corridors that seemed to have been designed by someone paid by the metre, eventually reaching the automated border gates. My passport, mercifully, recognised me faster than some relatives do, and I strolled into Britain 🇬🇧 and on to the appointed meeting point — where my son stood waiting, exactly where and when promised. Punctuality, it seems, runs in the family, even if Stansted’s timetable does not.
The first act of the weekend had gone off without a hitch. London, here we come.
Status pending. Two words, glowing gently in orange on my phone, informing me that persons unknown are, as we speak, “awaiting confirmation of my right to travel.” I read it twice. I have a valid French passport, issued by a Republic that has recognised my existence without complaint for decades. I have a valid ETA, a small digital blessing I paid good money for and received in writing. And yet somewhere in the clouds — the digital kind, not the kind over the Channel — a committee of algorithms is apparently still deliberating on whether I, personally, am allowed to cross a stretch of water that my grandparents crossed on a whim.
The app is at least honest about its limits. Chat support, it warns me, cannot help. Phone support cannot help. Only the check-in desk, and only twenty-four hours before departure, and only if the algorithm has not yet made up its mind by then. So the plan, as it stands, is to arrive at the airport in a state of bureaucratic suspense, like a man awaiting the verdict of a jury that has never met him and never will.
I mention, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, that I remember the 1960s. Long before Britain joined what eventually became the European Union — a decision I have always considered, along with a rather more famous Frenchman (Le Géneral) , to be a historical misstep — one crossed the Channel with a passport in one’s pocket and nothing else. No checks worth mentioning. No forms. No pending anything. You showed the little booklet, someone glanced at it, and that was, as they say, that.
Those were also, if memory serves, the days of Pounds and Shillings and Pennies — a currency you could at least understand by weight in your pocket, unlike the current system, in which my right to board a plane is apparently being weighed on scales I cannot see, by clerks I cannot speak to, according to criteria nobody has troubled to publish. Progress, I am told, is inevitable. I am simply not convinced it always moves forward.
In the meantime, I shall pack as planned, arrive early as instructed, and hope that somewhere between now and Sunday week the invisible jury reaches a verdict in my favour. If not, I understand there is a desk for that. There is, apparently, always a desk for that.
There is one thing I genuinely struggle to understand: the fierce opposition to renewable energy. Not because people raise questions—that is perfectly healthy—but because so many objections seem to stop at “No.” There is rarely a credible answer to the obvious follow-up question: “What do you propose instead?”
Take wind turbines. Are they beautiful? Not particularly. But neither are water towers, electricity pylons, industrial estates or motorways. Somehow we have learned to live with those because they serve a purpose. Why should wind turbines be judged by a different standard?
The same argument is often used against solar farms. They are accused of taking up valuable agricultural land. Yet an increasing number of projects are demonstrating that this doesn’t have to be an either-or choice. Crops grown beneath elevated solar panels can actually benefit from the shade during periods of extreme heat, reducing water loss while generating clean electricity at the same time. That sounds more like innovation than sacrifice.
Here in France, we are fortunate to have a strong nuclear industry that has provided reliable, low-carbon electricity for decades. But we also have to face reality. Many of our nuclear power stations are reaching an age where major refurbishment is becoming both technically challenging and extraordinarily expensive. Some will eventually need replacing altogether.
And then there is another inconvenient fact: nuclear power is not immune to climate change. During periods of exceptional heat, several reactors have had to reduce output or temporarily shut down because rivers become too warm to provide adequate cooling without harming the environment. As heatwaves become more frequent, this is unlikely to remain an occasional problem.
This is precisely why putting all our eggs in one basket makes little sense.
Renewable energy sources complement one another. The sun shines during the day, often most strongly in summer. Wind frequently blows when the sun isn’t shining and is often stronger during winter months or at night. Offshore wind farms, meanwhile, are far less intrusive visually than many onshore installations while benefiting from more consistent winds.
Are wind and solar the final answer? Of course not.
We should also be investing far more seriously in tidal power, wave energy, improved battery storage, smarter electricity grids and the next generation of energy technologies. Tidal energy, in particular, has shown promise for decades but still feels like the forgotten member of the renewable family.
No single technology will solve our energy needs on its own. But dismissing every new solution because it is imperfect is a recipe for standing still.
The real debate should not be whether we like the look of a wind turbine.
It should be whether we are prepared to leave future generations with an ageing energy system, rising costs and increasing vulnerability to climate extremes simply because we refused to embrace change.
Perfection has never generated a single watt of electricity.
Progress does.
🇫🇷
Arrêtons de dire « non ». Commençons par dire « et alors, on fait quoi ? »
Il y a une chose que j’ai beaucoup de mal à comprendre : l’opposition quasi systématique aux énergies renouvelables. Non pas que l’on puisse poser des questions — c’est même indispensable — mais parce que les arguments se résument trop souvent à un simple « non ». Et lorsqu’on demande : « Quelle est votre alternative ? », le silence est généralement assourdissant.
Prenons les éoliennes. Sont-elles esthétiques ? Pas vraiment. Mais les châteaux d’eau ne le sont pas davantage. Les lignes à très haute tension non plus. Pas plus que les zones industrielles, les autoroutes ou les antennes-relais. Pourtant, nous les avons acceptés parce qu’ils répondent à un besoin collectif. Pourquoi les éoliennes seraient-elles jugées selon des critères différents ?
Les panneaux solaires sont souvent accusés de « manger » les terres agricoles. Là encore, la réalité est plus nuancée. De nombreuses expérimentations montrent aujourd’hui qu’il est possible de produire de l’électricité et des récoltes sur une même parcelle. Les cultures installées sous des panneaux surélevés profitent même parfois de leur ombre lors des épisodes de fortes chaleurs, limitant l’évaporation de l’eau et améliorant certains rendements. Voilà une belle illustration de ce que peut être l’innovation.
En France, nous avons la chance de disposer d’un important parc nucléaire qui nous fournit une électricité peu carbonée depuis plusieurs décennies. Mais il faut aussi regarder la réalité en face. Une grande partie de nos centrales vieillit. Leur prolongation nécessite des travaux gigantesques, d’une complexité technique et d’un coût considérables. Peut-on continuer ainsi indéfiniment ?
Un autre élément est souvent oublié : le nucléaire n’est pas insensible au changement climatique. Lors des fortes chaleurs, plusieurs réacteurs ont déjà dû réduire leur production, voire être arrêtés temporairement, parce que les rivières utilisées pour leur refroidissement étaient devenues trop chaudes. Avec des canicules de plus en plus fréquentes, cette situation risque malheureusement de se reproduire.
C’est précisément pour cette raison qu’il serait imprudent de miser sur une seule technologie.
Le vent et le soleil ne sont pas des concurrents, mais des alliés. Le soleil produit essentiellement le jour, particulièrement en été. Le vent souffle souvent davantage la nuit ou pendant l’hiver. Leurs productions sont complémentaires et contribuent ensemble à sécuriser notre approvisionnement en électricité. Quant aux parcs éoliens en mer, ils sont bien moins visibles depuis les côtes tout en bénéficiant de vents plus réguliers et plus puissants.
Les éoliennes et les panneaux photovoltaïques représentent-ils la solution parfaite ? Bien sûr que non.
Nous devons également investir beaucoup plus dans d’autres technologies prometteuses : l’énergie marémotrice, l’énergie des vagues, le stockage de l’électricité, les réseaux intelligents ou encore les nouvelles générations de réacteurs nucléaires. L’énergie des marées, notamment, fait l’objet de recherches depuis des décennies et mérite sans doute une attention bien plus grande qu’aujourd’hui.
Aucune technologie ne résoudra, à elle seule, tous nos besoins énergétiques. Mais rejeter systématiquement chaque solution au motif qu’elle n’est pas parfaite revient à refuser tout progrès.
Le véritable débat ne devrait pas porter sur l’esthétique d’une éolienne.
Il devrait porter sur la manière dont nous voulons garantir à nos enfants et petits-enfants une énergie abondante, abordable et décarbonée, dans un monde où les épisodes climatiques extrêmes deviennent la norme.
La perfection n’a jamais produit le moindre kilowattheure.
I missed last weekend’s recap, and I’m going to go ahead and pre-apologize for the next ten days too, because in approximately three hours the small kiddies and their parents touch down in Carcassonne, and with them, the tranquility of this household enters a managed decline from which it will not recover until further notice.
I have spent the morning preparing accordingly. This mostly meant wrestling the children’s car seats into position, a task that reveals with brutal clarity that I do not, in fact, hold a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. Modern car seats are apparently designed by people who have never met a child, an adult, or a car, and who instead consulted only with the manufacturers of tension springs and existential despair. I emerged victorious, sweaty, and slightly humbled.
The car itself has also been washed, on the theory that arriving relatives judge the state of your life primarily by the state of your windshield. I’ve filled the tank too, in anticipation of the trip to the seaside that we will almost certainly be taking, because the canicule remains firmly in charge of the weather here. I should note, for the record, that I personally am bearing this heatwave with tremendous stoicism — hydrating diligently, exactly as recommended, still no alcohol. Whether this composure has anything to do with the air-con or the swimming pool sitting five meters from my chair is a question I choose not to investigate too closely.
In news from slightly further away — 400 kilometers further away, straight up — the ISS made another pass overhead last night. Six minutes of visibility starting at 23:01, gliding west to east at a stately 74 degrees, big enough that you can almost convince yourself you’re seeing the solar panels catch the light rather than just a very committed dot. Tonight it’s doing an encore, twice, at 22:08 and 23:45, which means I’ll be craning my neck skyward right on schedule — and now, so will a car full of newly landed houseguests, whether they were planning on it or not. Nothing says “welcome to Carcassonne” quite like being handed a lawn chair and told to look up.
On an amusing note, I got a message from the new owner of the Turtle 🐢— my dearly missed Mehari — with a full medical bulletin. The clutch has been changed, purely as a precaution, along with a few other bits and pieces. I am delighted to report that the operation was a success and the patient is now fully recovered and cleared to hit the road.
There’s something deeply reassuring about hearing your old car is in good hands and better health than when you last saw it, even if it does feel a bit like getting a postcard from an ex who’s doing great.
See you all in ten days, tanned, outnumbered, and hopefully still hydrated.
🇫🇷
Pas de récap cette semaine (ni peut-être des dix prochains jours, té)
Bonnes gens, je n’ai pas fait mon récap le week-end dernier, et je m’excuse par avance pour les dix jours qui viennent, parce que dans environ trois heures, les petiots et leurs parents débarquent à Carcassonne, et avec eux, la tranquillité de cette maison entre dans un déclin organisé dont elle ne se relèvera pas de sitôt. Peuchère.
J’ai passé la matinée à me préparer comme il faut. Ce qui a surtout voulu dire lutter, tel un forcené, avec les sièges auto des enfants pour les fixer dans la voiture. Un travail qui révèle, avec une clarté brutale, que je n’ai pas, moi, le diplôme d’ingénieur mécanicien qu’il faudrait. Ces sièges auto modernes, on dirait qu’ils ont été dessinés par des gens qui n’ont jamais rencontré ni un enfant, ni un adulte, ni une voiture — mais qui ont plutôt pris conseil auprès des fabricants de ressorts à tension et de désespoir existentiel. Té, j’en suis sorti vainqueur, tout suant, et un brin humilié.
La voiture, elle, a été lavée aussi, sur la théorie que la famille qui arrive juge l’état de votre vie d’abord à l’état de votre pare-brise. J’ai fait le plein également, en prévision du fameux voyage à la mer qu’on va très certainement faire, vu que la canicule, elle, ne compte pas lâcher l’affaire de sitôt. Je précise, pour la postérité, que je supporte personnellement cette chaleur avec un stoïcisme admirable — je m’hydrate comme il se doit, toujours pas une goutte d’alcool, fadaise que je suis. Que cette sérénité ait un rapport quelconque avec la clim ou la piscine à cinq mètres de mon transat, ça, c’est une question que je préfère ne pas trop creuser.
Nouvelle amusante : j’ai reçu un message du nouveau propriétaire de la Tortue 🐢— ma Méhari tant regrettée — avec un bulletin de santé complet. On lui a changé l’embrayage, par précaution pure, et quelques autres bricoles avec. Je suis ravi d’apprendre que l’opération s’est bien passée et que la patiente est requinquée et prête à reprendre la route. Il y a quelque chose de bougrement réconfortant à savoir que sa vieille voiture est entre de bonnes mains et se porte mieux qu’au jour où on l’a quittée — même si ça fait un peu carte postale d’une ancienne qui s’en sort très bien sans vous, té.
Sur un tout autre sujet, plus céleste celui-là, j’ai revu passer l’ISS hier soir. Mon application disait six minutes de visibilité à partir de 23h01, filant d’ouest en est à 74 degrés, si grande qu’on croirait presque deviner le reflet des panneaux solaires plutôt qu’un simple point qui se donne des airs. Et ce soir, rebelote, deux fois même, à 22h08 et 23h45. J’y serai, le nez en l’air, aussi sûr que l’accent qu’on a par ici — et les invités tout juste débarqués aussi, qu’ils l’aient prévu ou non. Rien de tel pour souhaiter la bienvenue à Carcassonne que de leur coller une chaise longue dans les mains en leur disant de regarder le ciel.
On se revoit dans dix jours, bronzés, en sous-nombre, et avec un peu de chance, toujours bien hydratés. Adieu-siatye !
In which we wear white gold and nearly miss a worldcup match
If Part 1 was arrival and Part 2 was Versailles doing its Versailles thing, Part 3 is where the plot thickens: a covert operation forty guests deep, a golden anniversary, a farm in the middle of nowhere with a postcode (78980 Longnes) that sounds like a satellite designation, and a back that chose the worst possible moment to stage a protest.
The Dress Code Was Not a Suggestion
Briefing: be at the farm by 6pm sharp, dressed in white and gold, tell no one, especially not the guest of honour. We treated this with the seriousness of a heist film. First stop, a hotel a quiet 15 minutes from Versailles, for the essential pre-op checklist: check in, shower, put on the white and gold, try not to look like you’re about to renew wedding vows yourself when you’re just there for the paella.
Down in the lobby, it turned out we weren’t the only operatives. An entire hotel’s worth of guests, some faces unseen in years, all doing the same slightly self-conscious white-and-gold shuffle, nodding at each other like a very well-dressed cult. We convoyed to a parking spot a couple of minutes from the farm, because forty cars pulling up outside a “surprise” party is the kind of subtlety that ruins surprises.
The Surprise, Successfully Sprung
All forty of us made it on time, which for any gathering of humans is itself a small miracle. Barely enough time for handshakes and the “you haven’t changed a bit” lies before the signal went out: she’s arriving, and she still has absolutely no idea. Total success. Full credit to the organisers, and especially to the children and grandchildren who apparently kept the secret better than most government agencies keep theirs.
What followed was a genuinely lovely afternoon of chaos in the best sense: a short theatre piece, some music, quizzes, general merriment, with the sun cooperating fully and turning the whole thing into the kind of warm, golden-hour scene you’d expect for an anniversary literally themed in gold. Paella for dinner, because apparently that’s the correct answer for feeding forty people who’ve just spent an afternoon performing amateur theatre in the heat.
The Back, the Painkillers, and Les Bleus
Then, at 11pm, the big screen TV emerged for the true main event as far as some guests were concerned: France v Paraguay, World Cup. I, however, had other plans, namely lying horizontally and not moving, courtesy of a back that had decided this particular evening was the moment to fully unionise and go on strike. Strong painkillers were deployed. We retired to the hotel while the football played on without us, which felt like a fair trade for a back that could bend again the next morning.
Brunch, Vows, and a Very Popular Tree
Sun still out, back much improved, we reconvened with fellow guests for coffee at 9am, and checkout was refreshingly painless — the hosts had quietly paid for every room, because apparently throwing a surprise party for forty isn’t generous enough on its own.
Back at the farm by 10:30 for round two: more activities, followed by a short walk through the fields to a specific cross, where the golden couple renewed their vows while the rest of us crowded, gratefully, into the shade of the one tree in the vicinity that seemed to understand assignment. There is something quietly moving about forty people willing to bake gently in a field just to watch two people promise, again, to keep doing what they’ve clearly been doing right for fifty years.
Back at the farm, oysters arrived courtesy of friends from Brittany, shucked and devoured alongside fresh salads and fruit, because nothing says “light lunch” quite like oysters that travelled further than some of the guests.
The Long Goodbye (In Stages)
From there, a 30km drive to my brother’s for some proper relaxing, a light dinner outside, and an early night that felt thoroughly earned. The next morning brought coffee, a croissant, and a run to CDG that went suspiciously smoothly — no traffic drama, no gate confusion, just a straightforward return of the hire car at Terminal 2D and the traditional long march to Terminal 2F, which felt less like a walk and more like a small pilgrimage. A spot of shopping (duty-free notably, and disappointingly, absent), then an on-time flight to Toulouse, an on-time landing, and the familiar hour’s drive home, delivering us through the front door just after 5pm, exactly as planned.
An excellent long weekend, in short: one surprise successfully executed, one back successfully sabotaged and then rescued, one set of vows renewed in the shade of a single generous tree, and one journey home that had the good manners to behave itself for once.
In which a shopping mall proves more faithful than expected, a market delivers on old promises, and a rendez-vous looms at the edge of every sentence like a tide coming in.
A foreign bed is a test of character, and I am pleased to report I passed it — up at nine, coffee dispatched, and facing the particular luxury of an entire day with nowhere urgent to be until six that evening. The rendez-vous itself would have to wait its turn. First, there was time to kill, and killing time properly is an art I take seriously.
We pointed the Captur toward Parly 2, once the undisputed capital of my teenage shopping ambitions. It has aged the way old friends do — recognisably itself, though half the tenants have been quietly replaced while you weren’t looking. I navigated its corridors without a single wrong turn, which felt less like memory and more like muscle reflex refusing to let go of the past.
From one nostalgic landmark to the next: Versailles town centre requires no GPS from me, only the faint pull of habit. We tucked the car into the underground car park and surfaced into the market, where the food hall performed exactly as advertised by two decades of memory — still excellent, still populated by names I recognised the way you recognise handwriting.
The side streets behind the market remain thick with restaurants, and choosing lunch was less a decision than a formality.
We settled outside, in the sun, and the meal that followed earned every bit of its reputation. Our waiter managed the rare trick of being both efficient and genuinely good company, which brings me to a small provocation for my American friends: no tip was expected, none was factored into anyone’s calculations, and the service was better than plenty I’ve had where twenty percent was assumed before the menus even arrived. Make of that what you will.
Lunch concluded, the Captur pointed a few kilometres further west — toward the actual reason for this whole excursion into the Paris region. That part of the story I’m still not ready to tell. More to come, as promised, and sooner than you think.
In which a small car becomes a medium car, a dry streak becomes a damp one, and a secret is guarded with the discretion of a man who has clearly never kept one before.
There is something almost suspicious about a smooth Air France flight. TLS to CDG came and went with the kind of quiet competence that makes a seasoned flyer nervous — no delays, no drama, nothing to complain about at all, which for a Frenchman is its own small crisis. I landed slightly disoriented by the absence of grievance.
The universe, ever balanced, corrected course almost immediately. Anyone who has passed through Charles de Gaulle knows that Terminal 2F and Terminal 2D exist in a kind of geographic estrangement, connected by a walk best described as aspirational. I arrived at the car rental counter having earned my rental car the old-fashioned way: on foot, with luggage, questioning several of my life choices.
We had reserved something small and sensible. We were handed the keys to a Renault Captur instead — a perfectly respectable upgrade that I accepted with the theatrical reluctance of a man being handed a larger dessert than he ordered. Who am I to argue with a rental agency’s generosity?
The Germans have a word for it — Stau — which sounds exactly like what it is: a low, grinding syllable stuck behind a truck on the périphérique.
The drive west to Orgeval delivered precisely the traffic one budgets for emotionally before even leaving the terminal — not a surprise, barely even an inconvenience anymore, just the toll booth every arrival in the Paris region insists on collecting. I paid it without complaint, mostly because I’d used up my complaint quota on the walk between terminals.
My brother’s dogs, unlike the traffic, were a genuine welcome — bounding out with the unwavering conviction that I exist primarily as a playing partner who occasionally travels internationally for the sole purpose of being tackled in a garden. I did not disappoint. Reputation, once earned with a dog, must be maintained.
Aperitif outside, dinner outside, and a small betrayal of my recent sobriety in the form of two glasses of wine — poured, I should note, with the specific gravity of a man not remotely trying to talk me out of it. Dinner itself was a homemade Thai affair, expertly done, and good enough to send my thoughts drifting several thousand kilometres east toward our own upcoming Asian holiday. A dangerous thing, a good curry — it makes you homesick for a trip you haven’t taken yet.
Bed came early. Coffee comes now, along with the planning of a day that I’m told, with some ceremony, involves a surprise. I’ve been sworn to a discretion I intend to honour for at least the length of this sentence — so for now, dear reader, that’s all you get. More once the secret has the decency to reveal itself.
Douze jours. Douze. Journées. À trente-cinq degrés. Certains n’ont même pas survécu à l’apéro sur la terrasse sans invoquer le réchauffement climatique, leur mutuelle et le nom de leur cardiologue dans la même phrase.
Pendant ce temps, sur BFM, un monsieur en costume nous explique avec la voix grave qu’on utilise pour annoncer une guerre que “ces températures ne sont pas normales”. Merci Jean-Michel, on avait remarqué, on transpire depuis le petit-déjeuner.
Alors j’ai fait ce que personne ne fait plus en France : j’ai regardé ailleurs. Littéralement, sur une carte.
À Koweït City, on vit avec une moyenne de 37-38°C, jour ET nuit, du mois de juin au mois de septembre. Pas un pic. Une moyenne. Quatre mois. Les nuits ne descendent quasiment jamais sous les 30°C — pas de répit, pas de petite fraîcheur à 4h du matin pour se rendormir en paix. Rien.
À Doha, à Dubaï, à Ahvaz, c’est le même refrain, avec en prime l’humidité du Golfe qui transforme l’air en soupe. À Djibouti, on cumule 34°C de moyenne ET l’humidité de la mer Rouge. Les gens y travaillent, y élèvent des enfants, y vont au marché. Ils ne passent pas le JT à pleurer devant un ventilateur.
Nous, en France, on culmine à 35-40°C en pointe, sur quelques jours, avec climatisation dans un appartement sur trois, une baguette fraîche tous les matins et Canal+ pour se plaindre confortablement. Et c’est la fin du monde.
On a inventé un mot pour ça — l’éco-anxiété — pour ne pas avoir à dire le mot qui convient vraiment : on est devenus mous. On a un siècle de confort dans les jambes et on a perdu, collectivement, la capacité de simplement… avoir chaud. De boire de l’eau. De fermer les volets. De ne pas allumer la télé.
Nos grands-parents faisaient les foins en plein août sans climatisation ni notification “alerte canicule” sur leur téléphone. On n’est pas plus fragiles biologiquement qu’eux. On s’est juste beaucoup mieux équipés pour se convaincre qu’on l’est.
Alors non, la France ne va pas fondre. On va juste devoir, l’espace de deux semaines, se comporter comme les huit cents millions d’humains qui vivent avec ces températures toute l’année : boire de l’eau, rester à l’ombre aux heures chaudes, et éteindre la télévision.
Surtout la télévision.
🇬🇧
Twelve days at 95°F and everyone’s calling their therapist
Twelve days. Twelve. Whole days. At 95°F. Some people couldn’t even survive an aperitif on the terrace without invoking climate change, their health insurance, and their cardiologist’s name in the same sentence.
Meanwhile on the news, a man in a suit explains to us, in the grave voice usually reserved for announcing war, that “these temperatures are not normal.” Thanks, Jean-Michel, we noticed, we’ve been sweating since breakfast.
So I did something nobody does in France anymore: I looked elsewhere. Literally, on a map.
In Kuwait City, people live with an average of 37-38°C (99-100°F), day AND night, from June through September. Not a peak. An average. Four months. The nights almost never drop below 30°C (86°F) — no relief, no little pocket of coolness at 4am to fall back asleep in peace. Nothing.
Doha, Dubai, Ahvaz — same story, with the added bonus of Gulf humidity turning the air into soup. Djibouti stacks a 34°C (93°F) average with Red Sea humidity on top. People there work, raise children, go to the market. They don’t spend the evening news crying in front of a fan.
We, in France, peak at 95-104°F for a few days, with air conditioning in one apartment out of three, fresh bread every morning, and cable news to complain comfortably in front of. And it’s the end of the world.
We invented a word for it — eco-anxiety — so we wouldn’t have to say the word that actually fits: we’ve gone soft. We’ve got a century of comfort behind us and we’ve collectively lost the ability to simply… be hot. Drink water. Close the shutters. Turn off the TV.
Our grandparents did the haymaking in full August sun with no air conditioning and no “heatwave alert” notification on their phone. We’re not more biologically fragile than they were. We’ve just gotten a lot better equipped at convincing ourselves that we are.
So no, France is not going to melt. For two weeks, we’re just going to have to act like the eight hundred million humans who live with these temperatures year-round: drink water, stay in the shade during peak hours, and turn off the television.
I do it my way 