Have a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

Yesterday afternoon, while walking the dogs in the vineyards, the loop on the lace of my right boot somehow managed to attach itself to the hook on my left walking boot, and I went crashing to the ground.  You know when you are young and you fall, you very quickly jump up and brush yourself down, hoping that nobody has noticed - that no longer applies to me as I just lay there, refusing all offers of help, while I took stock of the situation.  Luckily the ground broke my fall (as Spike Milligan once said), but part of that ground included a big stone which I must have landed on as by the time I managed to stand-up (or allow myself to be pulled up!), I could already feel a large bruise on one of my ribs.  

The ironical thing is that I had designated 2019 as my ‘Year of Health’ .  Not making huge resolutions that I would never keep but just deciding to eat more healthily, exercise more, cut back on alcohol (not ‘dry’ january but ‘moist’ january), and more specifically, to sort out all the niggling health problems that I had ignored for years.  Even though I’ve lived in France for ages, I still have the stoic British mentality that means I don’t even consider seeing a doctor unless a leg is falling off whereas my french partner makes an appointment at the first sign of a sore throat.  I have been very lucky to have been in ‘rude’ health for many many years but it seems that once you get to a ‘certain age’, your body starts creaking and letting you down, so to start the New Year off I made an appointment with the village doctor.  

He listened to my heart (still beating, apparently) took my blood pressure (11 over 6 whatever that means) and asked a few general life-style questions and then sat down and started writing the equivalent of War and Peace on a prescription pad.  He seemed appalled that I hadn’t had a blood test for several years (very regular here apparently) so that was added to the list.  Following my trip to the pharmacy I left with one of those ‘bags for life’, brimming with pills, products and potions - so much so that I then spent some time sitting at my computer turning it all into a spreadsheet so I could remember what to take or what to do at what time of day, and for how long etc.

One of the problems which I have ignored for far too long has been the feeling of having blocked ears and it is now affecting my hearing, so many of the products and potions were in an attempt to deal with this - allergy pills, salt-water nasal rinses, nasal sprays etc.  At the same time I have been following some strange exercises I found on the internet which involve pulling extraordinary faces to move the jaw-bone, and also pinching your nose and blowing hard.  Which brings me full circle back to yesterday’s fall…… my  bruised rib only hurts when I move, laugh, cough or sneeze and when I tried the exercise of pinching my nose and blowing hard it proved almost fatal.  At least being partially deaf means I can pretend not to hear my partner laughing when he remembers my fall, nor hear him telling me that I should’ve tied my laces better!  As for my ‘Healthy 2019’ - I shall restart it when I am feeling better!

I really must protest....

Today I managed to drive into Perpignan and back again.  Not normally something to take such pride in, but today is Day 8 of what was meant to be a 1 Day public demonstration by the ‘Gilets Jaunes’ and driving anywhere has become quite an adventure this week.

The idea of the Gilets Jaunes campaign was to protest against the high cost of diesel –and the protest involved blocking major roundabouts, motorway access points, and ‘Escargots’ (traffic deliberately moving at ‘snail-pace’).  At first we followed the general advice of ‘don’t drive anywhere unless your journey is absolutely necessary’, but then I noticed that the local supermarket shelves were looking a bit sparse, and the garage had run out of diesel - and so had I.  We are lucky enough to live just 20 minutes from the Spanish border where fuel prices are 30 cents per litre cheaper than here, so we decided it was worth a try.

Photo credit: orangeactu.fr

The roundabout just before the entry to the motorway was teeming with protestors wearing their Hi-Vis yellow jackets (Gilets Jaunes) and waving placards, and they were just ‘filtering’ traffic ie stopping lorries but letting cars through – particularly those who had placed their own yellow jackets on the dashboard of the car, which we had.  We are not stupid.  All in all there was just a minor delay getting onto the motorway, and best of all, the toll barriers were up and we were informed ‘today it’s Macron who is paying’! 

 

A few days later, buoyed up by this success we then decided to go to Toulouse to collect something that the driver was unable to deliver.  There were even more protestors by this time, and food trucks, tents, flags and klaxons.  We were ‘invited’ to do an extra circuit of the roundabout to show ‘solidarity’ but then managed to get onto the motorway.  The toll barriers were up again but the protestors were handing out the tickets ‘just in case’ – which was unfortunately the case as there were no protestors and the barriers were in place at the Toulouse exit.  (But the journey home was ‘free’ – I must write to M. Macron to say thank you for saving us 18€!)

Today is officially a National Day of Protest – which only seems to differ from the past few days by the fact that no ‘normal’ buses are running and there is a huge demonstration going on in Paris.  Free transport has been laid on to get people to Paris – and my suggestion of taking advantage of that but just going shopping was not received with great enthusiasm!  There were also big demonstrations planned in Perpignan centre and the advice again today was not to travel anywhere – but I had to go to town to prepare an apartment for a guest who has no idea he is going to have problems getting there.  Having planned my journey with military precision (checking Twitter and the local radio) I approached the main roundabout – smoke could be seen billowing into the air as they burnt tyres and pallets – but I was waved through (little did they know it was the dog’s walking jacket that I had on the dashboard!).   Although I passed several ‘escargots’ (with police escorts) and heard shouts and klaxons from the centre of town, I managed to make the trip unscathed, but there was a real feeling of ‘civil unrest’ if not ‘civil war’ about the whole situation.

I was going to finish this blog with a light-hearted complaint that my walking boots are falling apart but I can’t get to Decathlon as it is on a well barricaded roundabout, and my discount voucher expires at the end of the month, but having just had a run in with an aggressive protestor on the motorway (on foot!) who tried to stop us by placing traffic cones in front of the car, I am feeling less amused.  This is rapidly getting out of hand.   In fact within 1 hour of the start of this ‘peaceful’ protest, somebody was run over and killed, and since then there have been several hundred injuries.  ‘Professional’ protestors have now joined the original group, nerves are frayed, businesses and commerces are losing money and there is a dangerous feeling about the whole situation. 

Apparently President Macron is going to make a statement on Tuesday …..