It doesn’t seem possible that it has happened again. For the third time in 18 months, buildings the world over are being lit up in the colours of the Tricolore, and Twitter is no doubt awash with new “je suis” hastags. 84 innocent people out celebrating France’s biggest holiday. Women, children – just watching the f**ing fireworks, nothing more. There are no words to describe it. How many more times are we going to suffer these tragedies? And how long until we realise that intensifying bombing in Iraq and Syria by way of response is putting out fire with gasoline? The world is a sad place at the moment, it really is. Sad and scary.
Maybe that explains the antics going on over the Channel – we Brits thought the rest of the world needed a laugh so we decided to spectacularly self-immolate for its entertainment. In case you missed it, on Wednesday this week, we got a new Prime Minister. A woman for whom quite literally no-one voted was sworn in as PM by a head of state for whom no-one voted either. Our unelected PM presides over a parliament made up of two chambers, one of which is unelected. There are people who voted for Brexit because they felt their democracy was under threat. I sincerely hope these cretins are now beginning to appreciate the magnitude of their folly.
Our new PM is Theresa May and put simply, she is an evil cow. Her voting record shows her to be a homophobe (hence her appointment as Equalities Minister in 2010. The Tories may be evil but they have a healthy sense of irony, I’ll give them that). She is also no fan of human rights and will no doubt now be free to fulfil her ambition of repealing the Human Rights Act. She’s only been in place 4 days and she’s already abolished the country’s Climate Change department. Heaven forbid we should have any sort of plan to deal with a looming global catastrophe… In her time as home secretary, she launched a campaign of “immigrants go home” posters that were so shockingly vile that even she soon agreed to quietly withdraw them. But not before the damage was done. The current wave of hate crimes and racism sweeping the country has its roots in her policies, of that I’m sure.
I refuse to call the country Great Britain anymore, because it so clearly is anything but. The ‘United’ part of United Kingdom sticks in the craw too, for that matter. It’s just brexit-britain now: the crotchety old granddad in the corner of the room that sits there mumbling racist slurs under its breath as those around it look on with a mix of pity and disgust.
And Boris Johnson, the man next most directly responsible for Brexit after David Cameron, is now Foreign Secretary. Yep, that’s right: Bojo, Britain’s answer to Donald Trump, now holds the 4th most powerful office in the country. No, really. The appointment was of course met with a mixture of incredulous hilarity and anger both domestically and internationally. But in the context of brexit-britain, he is in fact the perfect choice. Our attitude to Johnny Foreigner is now essentially “f^&k you all”. Who better to spread that message than an overtly racist oaf who has already insulted the populations and leaders of most of the countries across the world? You couldn’t write this stuff, you really couldn’t.
Ok, I cant take any more poring over the horrible state of the world so I shall switch to our own, much more local news. Probably the biggest item there is that, despite our best efforts, we have been dragged back into Musique en Herbe for one final concert. We’re even off there this very afternoon for a rehearsal. It’s on the 6th of August and will take place in Nontron. In fact, it’s the anniversary of the first ever gig we did with the group – La Fête du Couteau. Last year it fell on a cold and drizzly day so we ended up playing inside in front of a tiny crowd of 20 people. This year, the organisers have collaborated with numerous other communes and attendance is expected to be anything from 300 – 500. We flatly refused to play when asked, pointing out that we werent free on 3 out of the 4 remaining fridays to practise. This was met with the most amazing display of pleas from Alain, who came round personally and offered to pay us, or to come and do work on our house for free if we said yes. In the end, we gave our consent to doing the gig on condition that he organise supplementary rehearsals, and he readily agreed.
We had a fairly boring week that doesnt really need much describing. We’ve both had some work to keep us busy, which for me has been a both a welcome change and distraction. So, skipping ahead to the weekend – last night we were invited over to Gilles and Myriam’s for “dinner”. I use quote marks because by typically Perigord standards, dinner was exactly what was missing from the evening. We got there around 6 and sat out on their terrace enjoying the sun. Along with us were Barry and Carol who were freshly back from a 3 week stint in Britain, and pleased to be home. There were all the usual aperitif nibbles you’d normally find, and after a while I thought to myself “I’d best stop snacking on these or I wont have room for the meal”. At this point we moved inside “to have dessert”, and I realised that that was all we were getting. In fairness we didnt exactly leave hungry, but it was still a bit surprising, especially when compared to how full we are whenever we eat at Lucien and Mauricette’s.
We also gleaned one good bit of news while there, about Milhac’s wind farm. Studies are being done at present on the local bat population, and several rare and protected species have been identified in the area. This alone could be enough to kill the project in its tracks, but even if it doesnt, it now guarantees an 8-year delay while more tests are done. So, at the very least, we have a reprieve.
We returned home to find several messages from Alain wondering why we werent at practise and when he could expect us. He’s half-deaf but also suffers from acutely selective hearing. I can only wonder what chaos awaits us this afternoon. You’ll get to find out next week.