Officials say that the end of lockdown went smoothly. But some Parisians threw caution to the winds. And a young man appeared in court in western France after being caught flouting confinement rules 17 times.
France is a country of rules and regulations. But it’s also a country where the rules are habitually bent.
It’s the “normalement” factor.
“Do you have a room?” you may ask a hotel. “Normalement, non,” they may reply and then find you one, which shouldn’t really be let for some obscure reason or other but can be put at your disposition exceptionellement. (I remember this example from a book review I read many years ago. I think it was of Polly Platt’s brilliantly titled French or Foe, which I confess I have never got round to actually reading.)
There was a lot of rule-bending as the end of lockdown approached, as I noted yesterday.
Now it’s over but we’re still a red, high-risk, zone here and normalement the promenades along the side of the Marne are closed by decree. But, encouraged perhaps by the fact that it’s not exactly clear how they’re defined, many of us celebrated the first day of déconfinement with a riverside stroll.
There were even a couple of fishermen. Unlike the flock of Canada geese with their goslings, who are not constrained by anti-virus concerns, people were mostly observing social distancing.
That wasn’t the case along the Canal Saint Martin in Paris. Crowds of young, immunity-confident people gathered there in great, tightly packed numbers.
📹 Pris d'assaut par des Parisiens en cette première soirée de déconfinement, le canal Saint-Martin à Paris est évacué par la police @ouanesofiane #AFP pic.twitter.com/ltsajvauaB
— Agence France-Presse (@afpfr) May 11, 2020
That prompted the Paris préfecture to issue a new decree, banning the consumption of alcohol along the waterway.
Meanwhile, shoppers have been queueing at the required distance, masks are widely worn and many people continue to work from home.
An 18-year-old man appeared in court in Rennes, the Breton capital, yesterday, charged with his 17th breach of lockdown rules.
Police stopped his car on Saturday night. His passengers legged it but he was detained and found to be driving without a licence or insurance.
They also found that he had already been booked 16 times for being outdoors without the certificate required if you left home.
A sentence of 35 hours of community service after his 10th breach of the rules had apparently failed to make a great impression.
I can find no report of Monday’s judgement.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 26,643, 263 in the past 24 hours. That’s a worrying reversal of the decline in the daily death rate, which was down to 70 yesterday, but not as high as last Monday’s 306. It can probably be partly explained by underreporting at the weekend and, of course, reflects the infection rate of about a fortnight ago. 22,284 people are in hospital, down 285 yesterday, with 2,712 in intensive care, down 64. 56,724 patients have been discharged from hospital, 507 of them yesterday.
