Bring Your Own Spoon

Here in the Swiss countryside in this empty time between Christmas and New Year’s, many of our usual restaurants are closed. The (often reduced and overworked) staffs are having a break from the pre-Christmas storms of unruly family gatherings and office dos. Normal life is suspended, and eating is now being done at home in front of the TV or at altitude in the ski station fast-food cafés as the skiers wait for snow.

In the Canton of Zug (where most of the Swiss millionaires live as tax rates are lowest) there are scandalous reports of being charged 2.50 francs if you ask for a second spoon to share a dessert, and paying a 3-franc surcharge if your bill is less than 80 francs.

Nasty rumours are also floating of being charged 3 francs for a clean plate to put a baby’s French fries on, and of having to pay 5 francs extra if two people share a pizza.

When asked to explain these shocking revelations, the restaurants retort that people are not being forced to eat there. Go elsewhere! Obviously, managers and owners are hollowed out and angry.

Now I’ve had some bad times in restaurants what with one thing and another. The worst is when they just don’t feed you (Czechoslovakia circa 1990) and all the wait staff is sitting around a table staring at you. Or when they get really angry because you bring a product they claim they cannot get in their country (breakfast jam, Russia circa 1992) and punish you with no coffee or tea. Or when you just plain get kicked out (Italy circa 1980).

Most memories have been repressed (certainly the ones having to do with various St Bernard dogs under the table), but from the incidents I recall, most unpleasantness has had to do with kids – crying kids, spilling-things kids, not liking the look-of-the-food kids, hurting themselves in the bathrooms kids, getting their food taken away when they were saving the best-bit-for-last kids.

In fact, restaurants hate kids. They have neither money nor manners. Kids are the very antithesis of a seemly restaurant.

So, my advice to you, fellow diners, in this out-of-joint world would be to suck up the extra charges if you have to. In North America there are extra service charges, exorbitant corkage charges, and you have to tip hefty 20%. In Italy there is the famous “coperto” which I quite like as you pay your way in – like a night club. It is not expensive, and you get bread sticks. In Switzerland there are now extra energy charges in some establishments, and a small tip has become standard.

And as a wily customer in this brave new world, bring an extra spoon in your pocket if you want to be a real cheapskate; order two pizzas and take one home for breakfast; and, believe me, the baby doesn’t need a clean porcelain plate.

Of course, if you don’t want to do any of this, you can just stay at home and eat Christmas cookies. Forever and ever.

 

 

 

 

A Surfeit of Fun

I found an abandoned fairy yesterday across the road. In a highly unfairylike fashion, she was hollering at the top of her lungs for her Mom and Dad. Her costume included red lipstick, blue eyeshadow and translucent wings attached to the back of a sleeveless gossamer dress. Shivering in the freezing cold, I gave her my gardening jacket and we settled down to a sobbing conversation.

My five-year-old fairy was locked outside alone. Everyone else was having great fun at a costume Escalade party in an upstairs apartment. No one had realized there was a fairy missing.

There is a frantic craving for fun at the moment — not just here in the Geneva countryside, but all over the place. A recent trip to Madeira found us in the middle of a packed early-morning November flight out of Zurich. The passengers were excited and eager.

The flight into Funchal, the world’s most dangerous airport, went well (no turning back to Porto this time), and no medical incidents on board either.  But the fully-booked Edelweiss/Swiss flight must have got tangled up in so much fun, and I was electronically eliminated from having taken the flight.

They then, secretly, cancelled my flight back.

In the tourist world, ignorance is not exactly bliss, but it can help. For six days the weather was perfect in Madeira–sunny and just warm enough to leave the window open at night (necessary to avoid dust-related asthma attacks.)

The hotel had a tropical garden and a glorious view, and once upon a time must have merited its five stars. However, parallel to the world of fun-seekers, there has to be a world of fun-providers.  Sinks, toilets, towels, beds, and carpets do not clean themselves. Supper does not cook itself.  Drinks do not pour themselves.

There was almost no staff, BUT there was a grocery store nearby and a working television. Lunch was often the local specialty – swordfish with a fried banana on top.

However, the great pleasure of Madeira are the famous levadas which are man-made water courses coming gradually down the volcanic mountain sides. You do great circuits through the laurel forests, and if your walk is long enough there will be no tour bus crowds.

Yes, the thousands of cruise ship passengers coming into Funchal daily now have changed the atmosphere of the island. Flip-flopped people come ashore and board big black buses to take a tour of the island. They clog up the narrow steep roads and scenic view spots.

I have a theory that all of the people who once worked in the tourist industry of Madeira now work on the cruise ships.  They, too, have taken up the concept of fun. If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. You’ve got a job, food and a bed. The tips are better and you’re going somewhere.

Concerning my flight back, I was much like my little fairy from over the road: out in the cold with gossamer wings.  

 

 

 

 

Quiet Desperation

“Live at home like a traveller.” I was not quite sure what Thoreau was on about in Walden until last week a big fat man came to our house in the Geneva countryside. His head was shaved up both sides and his heavily oiled black hair stood up straight. His shoes were pointed patent leather.

The gate was open and he walked right in. He surveyed the premises and declared that the wood trim of the house needed re-doing. Immediately. There were holes and cracks. Horrible things were obviously living there. We were neglectful and shameful owners. The value of the house was going down the toilet.

Fortunately for us, and most exceptionally, he was available for the next couple of weeks. And most coincidentally, he was a master painter with a gung-ho team. The job would be done quickly, neatly, and professionally. Yes. There would be a real paper bill for the tax man. They would use the best quality products. There was no down payment. What could possibly go wrong?

I think we were the victims of circumstance: Boredom, nice weather, the very shocking idea of standing high on a three-tiered ladder applying drippy, sticky product to cobwebby overhead lattes, magnanimously giving work to total strangers, trusting humanity. It all rolled together in a perfect storm of date-roll sweetness.

I mean, the very same thing happened to Eve in the Garden of Eden. At least I had all my clothes on. And the black-eyed man was truly golden-tongued. No amulet will be needed for him to speak to Osiris when he crosses to the afterlife.

He came back with a cousin the next day, and they worked a total of 4 hours. They sanded by hand. They applied a first coat. Unfortunately, the main wooden area—the ceiling over the porch—had not been included in the original estimate. The price would have to be doubled! And then there was the window trim that could not be left like that!

Sigh. Not of contentment. I bargained hard, and he bargained harder. A team of 3 came on the second and last day and finished in about 6 hours. I said hello to the fat man’s two little girls on his telephone. The workers spoke a language among themselves and when I asked what it was, they all stared at me. The fat man gave me a cryptic answer that generations previously, his family had migrated from Northern India. There was silence. No one breathed a word.

As lemonade was served later, he expanded his dialogue by telling me he was extremely religious. I didn’t fall into THAT trap and kept my big mouth shut. He added, “But, Madame, you know that even religious people can be bad.”

They left vowing that they would be back to paint the whole house as soon as possible, and wanted to come to the Shack in the mountains to fix that up as well. Our denial of all future business transactions rolled off their Romani backs like water off a duck.

Oh yes. We did go on a real trip recently – to Gran Canaria. It was windy and cool. The old Santa Catalina Hotel was newly refurbished and very charming. We visited the great volcanic craters and were on the last direct flight back to Geneva.

That week-long trip cost about half what we paid (cash, of course) to the fat man.

To live at home like a traveller is exciting and all, but we can’t afford to do it permanently.

Waiting Rooms

Waiting rooms are not nearly as much fun as they used to be. Back in pre-pandemic times they were places of energy and human interest. Doctors would over-book with abandon, and you’d find yourself cheek by jowl with organized / harassed women phoning in supermarket orders and making arrangements.

The ophthalmologist’s was a very thoughtful place, as most printed matter was banished. Glossy vacation and architectural magazines ruled.  It was there that the old lady from the Valais was heard loudly complaining about the shocking smell of papist fish in the air on a Friday.

At the dentist’s I was treated to the sight of my normally-terrifying high school principal reduced to a trembling wreck as the grandfather clock ticked. I was never scared of him again.

There used to be reading matter—tattered and torn magazines with the crosswords filled in and the recipes ripped out.  If you were lucky, a grubby copy of today’s paper. Sometimes a little heap of free samples—skin creams and tooth whitening brochures. Boxes of paper tissues.

At the emergency room of the nearest clinic, there was a small wall-mounted TV with hyenas chasing, catching and eating a wildebeest. This ran on a 20-minute loop. I think the title was Magnificent Mother Natureobviously some sort of medical in-joke.  We the sickies were always captivated and our problems were reduced.  I’m sure some people, ashamed of their insignificant severed finger(s), even left.

With one thing and another, I have visited quite a few waiting rooms over the past few months, and I shake my head with sadness.

There are the hospital business visits where you fill in forms, sit on every second white plastic chair, get tested or vaccinated, and pay on the spot. (This is very Japanese-style where the waiting-room is arranged with church-pews all facing the same direction. In case of death, this can suddenly turn into a highly emotional public wake.)

There are new, fancy state-of-the-art waiting rooms. At the dermatologist’s there is a huge screen which gives “before” and “after” shots of various skin and wellness procedures. This becomes confusing, as often you cannot tell which is which. The weights around your waist to reduce belly fat, and the dancing sewing-machine-like needles on the face have both resulted in lasting mental damage.

I can confidently report that dentist, gynecologist, and GP waiting rooms are now socially dead. You occupy the room alone due to the well-spaced appointment schedule. Nothing to read. Nothing to watch. No one to listen to. Nothing to be learned. No tubes to squeeze.

So I look back fondly to last month when I found myself in a second-level parking lot in the once-raucous Thai tourist town of Patong. There were crowds of tourists needing their COVID tests.  In the breezy open concrete space there were line-ups, jostling, mistakes, laughter, shouting and confusion. The lady doing the tests was in a hermetically-sealed box and her gloved hands stretched into the voids of our waiting nostrils.

It was magic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The (Solar Panel) Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread

Sheer dogged determination and pure pig-headedness was the only thing that got us solar panels on our roof. And I am pleased to report they work. The energy that we don’t use on sunny days gets sold to the Geneva Industrial Services Department (the SIG) and they pay us what they can afford (the night-time electricity rate). This has now happened two or three times and I am soon going to have enough money to buy a new pair of shoes.

The installation cost us more than five years of time and about 40,000 Swiss francs. We happily paid more for French-made panels and, most deviously, Chinese ones were installed instead…but that’s another story. I do, by the way, apologize for leaving you all hanging with my blog of July 2, 2018 entitled Geneva Solar Panels (almost) Verboten!

The physical installation happened in the spring of 2019 and a team of nice young men fixed 42 panels on four different roof surfaces. To beautify our installation, the red tiles peeping out around the edges had to be painted with black tar (a condition of permission being granted.)

I realized the amplitude of the embarrassment involved in this story the other evening when long-lost friends were treated to the tale.  And here’s the whole shameful story in a nutshell:

We first applied for cantonal permission to install solar panels in 2015. The request was turned down as all villages in the Geneva countryside are “protected”. That means that inside the village boundaries ugly solar panels are considered an aesthetic eyesore and are simply forbidden unless they are hidden.

To enforce this rule, there is the Geneva Solar Panel Police. They are also called the Department of Monuments. One of the many other rules against solar panels, is that they must NOT be visible from a cantonal road. So we had two strikes against us from the very start—we are just inside the village limits and the busy road out front belongs to the canton.

Our chosen installation company was eager to help us get permission and promised assistance—a word in a local politician’s ear, for example—and waiting for “the time to be right” (i.e., the Swiss vote against any future nuclear power installations). This dragged on for almost two years.

Fed up with lethargy, we took the initiative to formally ask the first of the Geneva Tribunal (Appeals Court) to grant us an exception to the rule. The fee was 750 francs and our home-made “dossier” featured plans and diagrams and our eager production possibilities. Our humble non-historic house was proven to be in a totally discreet location and several pertinent precedents were cited.

On a cold January day, the Geneva Court (a group of eight including a judge) came to the village. They examined the site. They looked from the cantonal road to the roof and were almost all run over by the French frontaliers speeding home from work. They heard the army grenades exploding over in the bird sanctuary, they took note of the location under the approach to Geneva Airport. I was sarcastically asked why on earth I wanted solar panels anyway, as I was obviously a complete waste of time.

They turned down our request.

We sent the dossier out again to the second Geneva Tribunal. We paid another 750 francs. This was considered an act of idiotic throwing money away by almost everyone we knew. The second court traditionally backed up the first. After these two courts, the next step would be the Federal Swiss court which required real lawyers and more money than any honest person could possibly pay.

Not this time, baby. The judge wrote a scathing condemnation of the decision and its administrative errors and omissions. We were repaid our 1,500 francs. We were finally granted permission to install solar panels on our roof.

And so here we are. The 26th climate conference is now over, and deep climate depression is setting in.

Switzerland as a country can do much more about solar energy and should do it with civil grace and common sense. Even a little house in the Geneva countryside can help.

The Monument People should go back to figuring out what a real monument is, and then fighting to the death to defend it. And all the rest of us should become Angels who do NOT fear to tread in the mine-strewn world of Geneva’s solar energy.

 

 

 

 

The Bomb Shelter Revisited

We bought our house in the Geneva countryside sixteen years ago, and all our Swiss friends complimented us on our big and roomy bomb shelter. We use it to store little-used items such as Christmas decorations, antique computers, boxes of old slides, wooden tennis racquets, and decades of income tax returns. A freezer and a beer fridge both hum away happily, and there are still a couple of mystery boxes that haven’t been unpacked.

Starting at the height of the cold war in the 1960s, every private house built had to have its own officially-approved shelter – a thick-walled room with a mysterious contraption in one corner. This legal obligation was phased out about ten years ago.

However, back in October 2010 we were seriously alarmed when an official letter arrived, announcing The Official Bomb Shelter Visit. Suddenly faced with two pages of rules and diagrams (article 28 of the Civil Protection Ordinances) involving the verification and functionality of the air intake system, the anti-explosion valve, the pre-filter, the reducer, the blocking mechanism, the lead rings, the gas filter, and the condensed-water recipient we were flummoxed.

The crank was nowhere to be found. The dog was a prime suspect.

During those long years between inspections, all rubber bits were supposed to have been treated with silicon and the massive armoured door and window should have been kept rust-free. The motor should have been tried out (without filter attached) for at least five minutes every twelve months. The anti-explosion valve should have been cleaned and looked after. Attention should have been paid.

When the big day finally came, the inspectors tried to catch us out and arrived two hours before schedule. They were from the Swiss Civil Protection Force and wearing clean and sharply pressed brown and orange boiler suits. From a clipboard, they handed me a 10-page brochure on “Helpful Bomb Shelter Tips” and my heart sank.

Colleagues had told me that a drink, or even a bottle of wine, might be a friendly gesture to grease the inspection wheels. However, as my inspectors were of obviously non-Swiss cultural origin, this plan was relegated to a last resort.

Down the dusty, dog-haired steps to the basement, my inspectors trotted behind me and I heard a sigh—was it of contentment?—when we got to the massive door and they stepped inside and pulled it shut.

Miraculously, having done nothing, we passed the inspection. As they left the inspectors called out cheerily that they would be back in five years.

As the inspection day trauma gradually faded, retirement and travel and grandchildren happily filled in life’s cracks and the bomb shelter reverted to its friendly functions of storing swim fins and snorkels and mosquito nets and old toys. Until last week.

On November 10th, 2021 an official letter arrived. It cited Article 81 (sic) of the Civil Protection Ordinances and an inspection is imminent.  It stresses that the site has to be prepared, and the elements accessible and “manipulable”.  There are pages of cut-away drawings and a list of checks that should have been carried out every 12 months.

A new element has been introduced: the “emergency escape.”  It has to be functional and I have a horrible feeling that this involves the grill where a 10-ton flower pot is now standing with a huge tree growing inside it.

Off now down to the bomb shelter for a cold glass of “last resort”.  I will let you know how this all pans out.

Note: The original op-ed article, Inspection Day, was published October 22, 2010 in The New York Times (IHT). Le Jour de l’Inspection was published in Le Temps also in October 2010. The French translation by Emmanuel Gehrig.

 

 

A Daytrip from the Distant Past to the Incomprehensible Future

There have long been horses in the Vallée du Giffre[1]. They have been used to pull hay wagons, to plough fields, to clear forests, to transport wood. With fingers of time even reaching into our present lives, it was Roger Mullatier’s horse that dragged our cast-iron Godin heating stove, our beds, and tons of lumber up the mountainside on an old carved wooden sled.

The horse then turned into a Jeep, and now is a Quad. Neither of these machines needs horseshoes. Neither of these machines needs a farrier.

Remnants of the past live on in the Vallée du Giffre.  On a Monday morning in late June 2021, an itinerant farrier was parked in front of the old bell-topped schoolhouse at the bottom of our mountain road. His van door opened onto a shiny metal machine studded with dials. This was his heating oven—a propane driven forge furnace powerful enough to turn iron red-hot.

Various horses were waiting quietly. Donkeys were being tied to a railing along the road; a huge black feather-legged draft horse was looking on from a distance; and around the corner a couple of big chestnuts and a group of mottled ponies had all arrived.

The farrier’s trade is pre-industrial. The Romans protected their horses’ hooves with hipposandals – first made out of leather and then out of metal. The Gauls were probably the first to use metal horseshoes with nails (5th century). And since then all but the wildest mustangs have metal attached to the bottoms of their feet.

The farrier’s vocabulary is medieval and magical. There are leather aprons, hammers, nippers, clinchers, pullers, cutters, rasps, knives and hoof picks--all unique to the farrier’s trade.  I was charmed with the slice of antiquity suddenly presented.

An hour’s drive took us back to the real world of the Geneva countryside. End-of-the-month bills needed paying and my Crontosign app demanded an update. Netbanking was not letting me through. I was going to go to jail.

I finally had to phone the emergency hot-line-for-dummies number.  The nice young man spoke English and asked me for my contact number. And it went downhill from there. Passwords, Google play-store, scanning, capturing, the initial bank letter, receiving an SMS and transferring the number into the bank system. Three machines were needed simultaneously: computer, mobile phone, land line.

The nice young man grew tetchy, and at one point asked if I knew what an app was? I told him no. It was finally established that my mobile phone was too old to install the update. My initial bank letter was also too old. (They are both 4.)

He kept muttering “don’t panic”. I couldn’t figure out if he was talking to me or to himself. We finally managed to fix it, but his last warning to me was to NEVER uninstall the sucker as it was totally unrecoverable by mere humans.

Sigh. Give me an honest hipposandal any day.

 

 

[1] Haute Savoie, France

The Great Swiss Underpants Experiment

In these pandemic days The Swiss Federal Government is trying hard to keep up the citizens’ morale, and give us something meaningful to do.  They are on a roll. Last month featured the Swiss Army Underwear Scheme, and this month they have invented the Great Swiss Underpants Experiment.

Yes, there is a certain lack of imagination in the theme involved, but, then again, this is Switzerland.

Anyway, they want everyone to bury underpants in their gardens or fields and see what happens. This country-wide scheme was initiated by Agroscope, a federal agricultural-based platform, in collaboration with an ecologist at the University of Zurich. They want to survey the richness of Swiss soil.

After extensive research, I have found out that this is a time honoured technique. Swiss farmers have always buried their underpants. I myself, have even seen evidence of this just over the border in Haute Savoy, France, where our old neighbours were mountain farmers. This practise explains all the dark grey splotchy underpants always hanging on the line along the side of their farmhouse. As the land was so poor in nutrients, their underpants never dissolved in the miasma of bacteria, woodlice, earthworms, fungus strands and microscopic spiders of the rich lowland fields. Henri and Roger obviously just rinsed off their undergarments after a couple of months underground and carried on.

For the first 1000 collaborators in the Great Swiss Underpants Experiment, there will be two pairs of underpants provided for free along with six tea bags (this is for the Tea Bag Index comparison.) If you miss out on this offer, then you must use your own underpants that have to be 100% cotton, white, and “bio” (organic) and your own tea bags (one black and one green in tetrahedral bags will do.)

Your white cotton culottes have to be planted vertically and you must dig the trench straight down with a spade without disturbing the soil layer. You can leave the elastic band at the top sticking out. After waiting for two months dig out what’s left of your underpants, and send a picture and a soil sample back to Marcel.

You are advised to do the experiment in the springtime (NOW!) when the soil is most active, and you must visit the burial site regularly and observe the odour of the soil and the presence of earthworms.

You are warned that it is possible, because of climatic conditions that your underpants might not rot. This would be a great disappointment, of course, but could be entirely due to drought, for example rather than a lack of healthy dirt. It does not mention whether or not you should water your underpants.

Everyone who participates in The Great Swiss Underpants Experiment will be listed as a scientific co-author when the results are published–a meaningful addition to your post-COVID19 CV.

 

 

 

The DNA Test and the Frying Pan

Well, the fuss seems to have died down after Canadian family members have all given each other DNA testing kits (and home-grown cannabis) for Christmas. In one intransient case, the 99.99999999% proof has not been accepted, which is at least some sort of thread into the future. Blackmail, murder, guns and lawyers are all exciting possibilities.

Living through a pandemic makes us doubt even the obvious. My sister, for example, is talking about having all three of her adult kids tested, as she’s come to the recent conclusion that they’re not hers. This pseudo-medical procedure is obviously popular, for not only does it add a frisson of excitement to clogged and claustrophobic family life, but is a positive act of doing SOMETHING. It is a stand against the static frustration of watching, night after night on the evening news, everyone (except us) getting a jab in the arm.

As we can’t see the future, we are looking into the past. Last year at this time we were in south-eastern Sri Lanka. We rode in the bone-smashing back of jeeps with no suspension to see the deer, elephants and birds of the national parks. We ate freshly caught fish at the Lucky Star Villa. We were swirled through the blue smoke, the nasty monkeys, and the seething humanity of a Hindu festival. We stayed at the Cinnamon Villa where we longed for cold beer and dental floss. We revisited a time and place when the tsunami of December 26, 2004 wiped out the entire coast. We survived that one by the skin of our teeth.

In this particular bleak midwinter, we look at great offers of hotels with restaurants and swimming pools, and castles, and coastlines, trying to plan travels in a post-vaccine world. It stutters forward somewhat. There is doubt and powerlessness. Cancelled trips do not make great stories.

We eat curries and sushi and Mexican beans and sweet and sour pork. We remind ourselves of what we know and where we have been. We are, uncomfortably, living in the present. It is a silent and still place.

This was reflected yesterday in a cut-price supermarket that I don’t normally visit. It was empty except for a handful of staff cutting open cardboard boxes to display the contents. The little mall was dark and grim as the clothing stores, the pet food store, the shoe store, the café, the junk jewelry store, the nail salon, were all closed. I never go into these places, but I wanted them open. Tables and chairs, usually occupied by the old folks in the retirement home were all chained into ugly heaps. No sitting allowed.

I bought a new frying pan (that being the reason for my visit), being pleased and surprised that it was considered an “essential” item. I will fry up some Tupperware left-overs for lunch.

After that, I am thinking of getting a DNA kit to check out whether I am who I think I am.

 

COVID Conversations

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but out here in the Geneva countryside, people seem to be getting grouchier and grouchier.

Take the hedge police, for example. Back in the day they would come, look you in the eye, and explain that your relationship with your own personal flora was criminal (https://blogs.letemps.ch/joy-kundig/2016/05/17/busted/).

These days, a man phones in the middle of the night and over the noise of his snowplough, yells that your hedge is causing international chaos, possible road-closure, and that a specialized enterprise will have to be called in unless you deal with it, pronto!

We considered phoning the village COVID19-help hotline which offers services to at-risk retired people, but thought this just might make matters worse, as they would call HIM to come and help us, and he didn’t seem to be in the mood to appreciate the irony.

So we stepped out, intrepid, into the cold darkness, armed with flashlight and clippers. Minutes later, four long bamboo shoots (asylum seekers from the neighbour’s garden) lay dead beside the road.

The next morning, with mental health still somewhat fragile, there was a rare serendipitous meeting with an old acquaintance. He was searching for green tea at the local supermarket. Upon masked and distanced enquiry about health and general well-being, he replied, “Can it get worse?”

This called for the direct question of actual illness. No, he said, he was simply hanging on until January 26th. This being Geneva, one does NOT enquire further. Health problems are shrouded in secrecy. Not even I blundered into that one.  –Was it open-heart surgery, cancerous lump removal, a brain aneurysm that that needed to be coiled and stented, a colonoscopy???—

No, he went on, he was waiting for his COVID vaccination that had been arranged. Bitterly, he spoke of a friend who had had the blind luck to get a slot in front of him. He asked what we had done. I said we were just waiting for something to happen. A mild email had been sent to the family doctor. There had been no reply.

Mollified by our obvious negligence, and our not taking up coveted positions in front of him in the vaccination line-up, he explained his current personal search for elusive green tea. They only had bags here, and he would have to go to the shopping mall on the other side of the Rhone River to get the real thing.

I told him at least he had a mission—something to do. This was gasoline on the fire of frustration.  He stamped his foot and said he had MANY things to do.

Convinced that I had lost all human conversational skills due to months of talking only to the cat, a zoom call last night went a long way to restoring my mood and mental harmony.  An English friend announced he had applied to become an NHS Vaccination Marshall. It was hoped this position would include an anti-COVID shot.

We laughed and laughed and laughed.