In surrealist Coronavirus news, a zebra was spotted cantering along a road in Champigny last night. It was accompanied by two horses.
They had escaped from a circus that has pitched its tents by a huge commercial centre just outside the town, it turned out.
“It was heading for the fort at cracking pace,” reported Murielle Roux, who posted a video of the equine dash for freedom and on Facebook. “I called the police and they said that they had caught it. Ouf!”
So my town has an exotic version of those pictures of ducks waddling though Paris and coyotes by the Golden Gate bridge, which have led us all to speculate that a fall in pollution has allowed nature to reclaim the cities.
Not so, some spoilsport scientist has told Le Monde. They were there already but now we can see them, thanks to the lack of traffic.
Liliane Marchais, the widow of long-time Communist Party chief Georges Marchais, died on Wednesday in a care home in Bry-sur-Marne. She was 84.
The couple lived in Champigny and Fidel Castro visited the town to have dinner with them in 1995.
Fabienne Sintes, a much-travelled reporter who presents a broadcast on France Inter radio, told me once that she nearly ran Marchais over once, while learning to drive in Champigny. That would have been quite a headline, even if she had only just started her glorious career at the time.
A local doctor, Ali Djemoui, who practiced in Bois l’Abbé, has died, aged 59.
Good news on the mask front. The département is to buy 1.5 million and start distributing 150,000 per week on 27 April.
Some towns have also bought their own supplies.
As for the lockdown, Macron’s advisers have told the media he is going to extend it to at least 15 May, if not to the end of the month.
His speech to the nation tomorrow evening is going to be “Churchillian”, they say. In the “blood, sweat and tears” sense, one assumes, not the imperialist raving.
The Covid-19 death toll in France now stands officially at 13,832, up 635 in 24 hours. 31,320 people are in hospital, up 53, and 6,883 are in intensive care, down 121. 26,391 people have been discharged from hospital, cured.
