I went walking in the woods. For the first time since lockdown started.
Frogs croaked in the ponds, the sun dappled the ground and I couldn’t believe how loud the birdsong was.
The Japanese have a phrase – shinrin-yoku (forest bathing) – for going to nature recharge your batteries (to use a very unnatural metaphor). It works.
I was not alone. There was a group of pensioner-ramblers, some teenagers doing exercises by their car (the pensioners applauded them), families, groups of friends and cyclists – more people than usual on a weekday, perhaps because people want to stretch their legs and breathe the air of the woods after two months’ lockdown. And perhaps because many workers are still laid off or have lost their jobs, allowing them the small compensation of time to enjoy the natural world.
The forest, the Forêt de Notre Dame, is easy to get to from the towns that sprawl along the main road out of Paris to the east.
On sunny weekends, lockdown permitting, families come from the housing estates and residential streets to picnic on the grass in front of the Château des Marmousets. Smoke from barbecues grilling meat and veg for meals in French, Portuguese, Antillais and north African styles floats over a pond and a paddock for horses.
Adventurous visitors can visit an 18th-century ice-house sunk into the earth behind the château.
The very urban shopping centre I visited on my way back was also busier than usual. Queues in front of a games store and more shoppers than usual in the organic supermarket I went to. No photo of this. I had my hands full of fruit and veg.
The Conseil d’état has overruled the government’s ban on services in places of worship during the state of emergency, judging it “disproportionate” and a “serious and manifestly illegal” violation of religious freedom.
The case was brought to the council by a number of Catholic groups, including far-right organisations that were active in the campaign against gay marriage. They run a permanent campaign to prove that it is they, not Muslims, who are victims of discrimination due to secular and Islamic “Cathopobia”.
Some Catholics took particular offence at Interior Minister Christophe Castaner’s remark that one can pray on one’s own. The Conseil d’état agreed with them, declaring collective worship an essential part of religious freedom.
Protestants, Jews, Muslims and other religious persuasions have gone along with the government’s guidelines during the crisis.
So Catholics will be able to celebrate Pentecost in groups, although not in such large assemblies as the evangelical service that was party responsible for Covid-19’s virulence in the east of the country. The ban on assemblies of more than 10 people rests in place and was mentioned in the council’s ruling.
France’s Covid-19 death toll now officially stands at 28,239, 131 yesterday. 19,025 people are in hospital, down 346 in the past 24 hours, with 1,998 in intensive care, down 89. 61,728 patients have been discharged from hospital, 515 of them yesterday.
