The neglected Frog Blog has fallen into a state of torpor, and the prospect of doing something about it has become increasingly daunting as time passes. Although the miserable experience of the pandemic certainly didn’t help, our enthusiasm for blogging had already dried up some time ago.
As I write this, we are just days away from Christmas 2023 and seeing as work is quiet for me, I have decided to try and bring us up to date. My aim is to do a single post for each of the missing years, so you’ll be spared the tedious minutia of our daily lives that our blog entries are usually comprised of. These are the pandemic years though, so they probably aren’t going to make for very fun reading.
And so to the sorry, sorry story of 2020. The first few months have already been more or less blogged, so I shall begin in the spring time, and the first lockdown. I had just returned from my trip to the UK, and Mum had been forced to cancel hers. A few days later, on 17th March, France entered lockdown. Due initially to last a month, it was twice extended, finally coming to an end on the 11th of May, by which point we all felt 10 years older.
The drama and sheer novelty of it all meant that the first few weeks went by quite quickly really. Living in a rural setting with lots of land around us meant we got offf lightly compared to all the millions of wretched people living in cities. As a bonus, we had some mild days and even had a barbecue (for two) outside.
But it got harder as it kept dragging on. We fell into a routine of a weekly facetime chat with Mum and Dad on a Friday, which helped keep us sane. We also invented a new cocktail that has since become a house speciality. It was a sunny weekend and we didn’t have much in the house, but there was, for some reason, a bottle of limoncello kicking about. We mixed that with some vodka and fresh lemon juice, with a dash of fizzy water to take the edge off. The result was most pleasing and we named it the Quarantini.
A few weeks later, out of lockdown, we had Manu, Mathilde and Françoise round for dinner at ours. We were keen to show off our new beverage and just as I was preparing them, Françoise produced a bottle of champange she had brought to celebrate receiving her Masters and becoming Dr. Lermite. Inevitably, we scrapped the fizzy water and used champagne instead for a deluxe (but incredibly debilitating) version of the Quarantini that was immediately baptised the Déconfini.
Although we couldn’t rehearse together during the lockdown, we all had songs to learn for our newly named trio Mazerock – not that it seemed likely there would be many concerts happening that year. I was especially gateful to have music as a project, as I had very little work to speak of.
Dad meanwhile had been kept busy making us a new storage cabinet that we wanted to go under the stairs in the lounge. We had to wait until the end of lockdown to actually get our hands on it, but it was worth waiting for. Made out of chestnut, it really came out nicely.
Cases remained stable in France during the summer and it was a mostly hot and sunny one, complete with a heatwave in August. We even made it out of the Dordogne once. This was to attend Christian’s 70th birthday party at their new home in the Gers. We’d been asked to play for the occasion, making it Mazerock’s inaugural concert.
Summer 2020 also saw the creation of SARL Port 80 Services. We’d learned that it was legally dodgy of us to be presenting ourselves as a company when we were in fact two sole traders. And so with the help of CER France, our new accountancy firm, Port 80 became a Limited company.
This comes with several advantages, particularly in terms of being able to better save for retirement. The downside is having to charge VAT, which is more of an issue for my side of the business as my clients tend to be smaller, independent concerns, so not VAT registered themselves. But it was good to know that Port 80 was finally operating legitimately.
We ended up performing several times during the summer. Our next gig was at Paul & Nathalie’s, where we played to a group of friends for la Fête Nationale. In August, we were invited to play at Benoit & Virgine’s where we performed the same set but to a different crowd. This was followed by a gig at Sophie & Dom’s as the two of them were celebrating their birthdays. Paul couldn’t make this one so we did it as a two-piece, with an adapted setlist.
And our last gig of the year was in September at La Grelière, where a joint event took place to celebrate Mathilde’s 50th birthday and to say goodbye to Françoise, who by now had sold her house here and was moving imminently to Nice.
A little over a month later, we were back in lockdown, starting on the 30th of October. All the same rules applied as before: no leaving the house without a valid reason, or without your attestation de deplacement. All shops, bars, restaurants closed. Travel forbidden, borders closed. This one too was due to last a month, and this one too was extended, finally coming to an end on 15 December. It was a thoroughly miserable experience. And even once it ended, a nationwide curfew was put in place forbidding evening socialising. This was to run until 20 June 2021.
We were however allowed a sort of social life during the holidays, with the curfew being lifted for the 24th, 25th and 31st. We spent Christmas day at Mum & Dad’s, just the four of us. We also had a reduced NYE party at Manu & Mathilde’s. We only numbered 5 but we stayed till gone 4am and celebrated the demise of the year with gusto.
There were some scraps of good news to be had that winter. Most notable of course was Donald Trump being ejected from the White House – not that he went quietly.
And the other shining light was the vaccine. I have a generally quite dim view of us as a species and on balance think the world would be a better place without us. Just sometimes though, there are reasons to feel pride in humanity. And this was definitely one of them. Within 11 months of the pandemic hitting us, several potentially viable vaccines were being submitted for regulatory approval. The speed at which we were able to develop, mass produce and administer a vaccine was breath-taking.
With covid having already claimed 1.8m lives by the end of its first year, it couldnt come soon enough. And that takes us to the end of 2020.
2020 summed up in one David Bowie song: “Something In The Air”
A gem from his patchy 1999 album “hours…”, it’s actually a story about a married couple who realise they no longer love each other and have nothing left to say. The title was just too on-the-nose to resist though.