Category Archives: France

You can eat all of the pig … but you might want to find out how it was farmed

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Here’s looking at you – a Duroc pig grazing in the Jura Photo: Les Meilleurs cochons du monde

Don’t turn up your nose at fromage de tête, more widely available in France than in Britain or, I imagine, the US, but still a traditional dish wherever people eat pork.

Fromage de tête on display in a butcher’s shop in Dole Photo: Tony Cross

« You can eat all of a pig but its squeal.” (I was sure that we used to say “You can eat all of a pig but its whistle,” but can find no evidence to confirm this conviction.) I imagine every pork-eating culture has a similar old saw, the French version is “Tout est bon dans le cochon,” which is less colourful than the English version but does have the advantage of rhyming.

Use your head

A farmer in Georgia (the country, not the US state) sells his pig by the side of the road Photo: Tony Cross

The major challenge after you’ve butchered your pig, fed the genitals to the dogs and saved the blood for black pudding, is surely what to do with the head.

You can salt the ears. They were on sale, along with the tails and trotters, on Portuguese stalls when I used to shop at Champigny market. If your Italian, you can cure the cheeks to make guanciale. Some tripiers (butchers who specialise in offal, who are more common in the cities than around here, strangely) sell pigs’ brains, a dish that is definitely not for the squeamish or those concerned about their cholesterol level. But why not use the whole damn thing?

Well, you can if you make fromage de tête. This is far from being an exclusively French recipe, the English version sometimes being referred to as head cheese but more usually called brawn.

But, given that English-speaking culture feels it necessary to change the name of the animal when it is prepared for the table, dishes that ostentatiously declare what part of the body they are composed of face a certain amount of food-prudery.

Produce on sale at L’atelier du charcutier, which also does an excellent pig’s head sausage Photo: Tony Cross

Not so in France, where fromage de tête is sold by all self-respecting charcutiers and freely available in supermarkets.

I’m pretty sure that one of France’s favourite films, Les Tontons flingeurs, has a scene where Jean Gabin, as a senior gangster, shows a colleague how to prepare the dish, combining, as I remember it, folksiness and menace. I can’t find a clip of it, however, so here’s a video of how to prepare fromage de tête the French way. Apparently there are regional variations regarding what herbs to use and whether to add juniper berries – common in eastern France, it seems.

Recipes, with or without video, are available in English should you feel motivated to make your own brawn.

Cut out waste and boost your vitamins

British cuts of pig, from Mrs Beaton’s All About Cookery 1970 edition. A guide to cutting up a pig the French way can be seen here

One good reason to tuck into a pig’s head is to reduce waste. In France nearly four million tonnes of edible foodstuffs are thrown away every year and, even here, much of that is caused by items discarded for “aesthetic” reasons.

Another reason, advanced by nose-to-tail eating advocates, is that, having killed an animal for food, it’s only courtesy to eat it in its entirety. Plus the dish is rich in vitamins and potassium.

As with tête de veau (calf’s head), you have to like the gelatinous to appreciate fromage de tête. The texture makes a fine contrast with nice, crunchy pickles.

Factory-farms of 20,000 pigs

Conscientious carnivores should, however, pay attention to where their pork products come from.

Animal rights campaigners have brought to light several scandals concerning conditions in slaughter-houses and pig farms, for example the farm that was recently fined a modest amount by a court in Châlons-en-Champagne for brutal practices, including castration without anaesthetic, killing potentially unprofitable piglets by bashing their brains out on the ground, removing tails and teeth with pliers, and failing to treat animals with abscesses and hernias .

These abuses are generally found on industrial-scale farms that raise thousands of pigs to supply supermarkets. The farm that found itself in court, thanks to the campaign group L214, was raising 20,000 pigs.

Every now and then fires break out in these food factories. On New Year’s Day this year 1,032 pigs were roasted alive when just one of three sheds in a farm near Béthune in northern France caught fire.

Last year L214 filed legal complaints alleging “structural cruelty” against farms supplying the ELeclerc chain of supermarkets and accused two suppliers of Lidl of “flagrant breaches of regulations” in 2024.

These outfits were in Brittany, the epicentre of industrial pork production in France. The region produces 56% of the country’s pork, that’s 1,258 million tonnes, in 5,166 farms. The trade is worth 2.3 billion euros a year. There are only 100 organic farms there. In the Côtes d’Armor département there are four pigs for every human.

According to the Welfarm campaign, 95% of France’s pigs are raised in intensive farming, crowded into bare sties and prevented from going to feed in the open air. Sixty per cent are concentrated in just three per cent of farms, according to Greenpeace, which points out the massive pollution and health risks they are responsible for.

Admittedly no French producer has reached the heights attained by the Chinese establishment that was reported to be raising 650,000 pigs in a 26 storey-building near Wuhan.

However the agribusiness lobby is powerful in France. Critics of the hyperactive “farmers’ union”, the FNSEA, point out that its president, Arnaud Rousseau, spends little time ploughing furrows or feeding livestock, being the chairman of the agro-industrial group Avril and on the boards of several other companies. He claims there is no intensive animal farming in France.

Rousseau’s deputy, Jérôme Despey, chairs the organisation that runs the Salon de l’agriculture, the much-publicised annual event in Paris where the sitting president and lesser politicians feign an interest in prize bulls in front of the TV cameras.

Ethical(ish) eating is possible

Free-range pigs enjoy the Jura weather Photo: Les Meilleurs cochons du monde

But small-scale producers do exist. I asked the woman who sells pork on the country market at Bletterans how many pigs she had on her family farm; 50-60 was the reply. And the meat she sells actually tastes of pig (in a good way), ten time better than the bland pap you buy in a supermarket.

Another local producer, owners of the immodestly titled “Best pig in the world”, boasts that their pigs are raised in the open air, free, like Spain’s famous pata negra, to wander in the woods where they feed on leaves, acorns and berries.

Their website features charming photos of happy pigs and boasts that they abstain from several widespread practices such as castration (principally carried out to prevent the meat of mature boars having a taste and smell to which some people object),  putting a ring in the nose (to avoid churning up soil, only necessary when the pigs don’t have enough space, according to the site), killing off weedy piglets, drawing teeth, cutting tails, and artificial insemination (let nature take its course!).

So is possible to buy the meat of pigs that have lived the kind of life a swine might enjoy, although, obviously, that life has to be brought to a premature end in to get it to your table.

And these methods, along with the reduction of waste, can reduce the environmental harm caused by industrial-level meat production. But food production is responsible for about a third of human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. So, let’s face it, the enormous demand for meat, which is the major contributor, will continue to be a threat to the planet’s future.

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Why you should eat escargots + other snail fun facts

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A snail stall at Sellières’ Fête de la pomme Photo: Tony Cross

“That would be good to eat,” my neighbour and principal source of local lore, Jacques, said as a particularly fine escargot de Bourgogne slimed its way across my garden.

It turns out he goes snail-hunting from time to time, armed with a special ring to make sure he isn’t breaking the ban on taking molluscs under a certain size.

Snail shells collected in my garden – the largest ones are escargots de Bourgogne Photo: Tony Cross

It’s hard to believe in my garden on a damp evening, but some snails are at risk of  disappearance, in particular the most culinarily prized snail, helix pomatia – the kind Jacques was admiring – partly due to the voracity of French gourmets but principally because of pesticides and urban sprawl gobbling up its natural habitat.   

So there are French and European rules protecting them.

Since 1979  collecting them has been illegal in France from 1 April to 30 June – their mating season, which, like everything else to do with snails, takes some time. Unfortunately, the measure was not backed up by the establishment of a snail inspectorate, so it is unclear how effective it has been. In 2016 the Paris Natural History Museum appealed to gardeners to take part in a snail census. It appears to have been paused and relaunched on more than one occasion since.

Snacking on snails in the provinces

The snail farm at Domblans Photo: Tony Cross

Beside a road near the Jura hamlet of Domblans is a small field covered in nets. It’s a snail farm and you can buy its produce, to take away or enjoy sur place with a glass of white wine, at a nearby market during the sunny months.

There were no fewer than three stalls selling snails at Sellières’ annual fête de la pomme this year and frozen ones are available, ready to cook, at the local supermarket.

The Golden Snail and a competitor near les Halles during the last century

Like frogs’ legs, snails seem to be more popular here than in Paris. That was not always the case. In 1900, 500 snail merchants petitioned the Paris city council for more space in the Les Halles markets (before municipal vandals destroyed Baltard’s beautiful structures), pointing out that they sold 1,200,000  kilogrammes a year. Old photos show a number of restaurants in the area leading with their snail offer, advertised with seductive snail statues, one of which still survives, and catchy slogans like “Venez gouter mes limaces”.

The Burgundy city of Dijon, 68 km up the road from here, was one of the main suppliers with one company selling three million snails a year.

Demand may have declined but there are still at least 20 farms in this region. It’s not exactly a capital-intensive business, I suppose, given the limited amount of space and personnel needed, but it’s apparently not easy to domesticate helix pomatia, which is the biggest French variety and sports a handsome cream or pale brown shell,so other less glamorous species are more widely available for sale – the petit-gris (helix aspersa aspersa), the gros-gris (helix aspersa maxima) and the helix lucorum, which doesn’t have a French name and is imported from Turkey and the Balkans.

It turns out that we should all be eating snails. Their meat is a source of protein, low in calories and fats, and rich in organic nutrients such as magnesium, iron and selenium, although I’m not sure how many you have to eat a day to get the full benefit.

Snails ready to cook on sale at the Fête de la pomme Photo: Tony Cross

The classic French recipe is à la bourguignonne, cooked in butter, parsley and garlic and served sizzling hot in the shell to be extracted with the aid of specially designed tongs and a little fork. Jacques prefers them cooked straight on a hot slate, “like the gipsies”.

“It keeps their earthy taste,” he says.

Remember to purge your snails

The Philosophy of the snail, a stall on the market at Bletterans Photo: Tony Cross

Before eating them, you must purge your snails by keeping them for several days in straw and feeding them flour, so that any toxins they may have consumed are evacuated. It also used to be common to deslime them by immersing them in salt for about an hour.

Chef Daniel Zenner says his father used to do this, “you could hear them oozing”, but, quite apart from how the snails might feel about the process, he finds it makes them lose flavour and become tough. After they have had their week in detox, he keeps them in the cold for at least a week, then boils them, takes them out of their shells and puts them in jars with their stock.

“With time their flavour is enriched,” he says.

You don’t have to eat your snails à la bourguignonne. Other French recipes include in pastry, in salad, à la franc-comtoise (with cheese, mushrooms and sausage, although I have never seen this around here) à la Provençale, aka cargolade catalane, grilled in their shells with herbs and served with aïoli.

From Cro-magnons to the tsars

Snails and asparagus to feed them on sale at a market in Jerez de la Frontera, Spain Photo: Tony Cross

Who eats snails? Just about everybody except the English-speaking peoples, according to the experts, although I’m not sure that they are equally highly regarded everywhere.

In many countries they’re seen as poor people’s food but the Italians and the Spanish are pretty enthusiastic.

“My husband loves them,” Concha, our Spanish neighbour, told us when we found her collecting them in the courtyard where we lived in Champigny. Gourmet detective Pepe Carvalho prepares a particularly exciting rabbit with snails and chilli in Manuel Vasquez Montalban’s El balneario (The Spa). Feel free to post other recipes in comments.

Archaeologists have found evidence that humans were eating land snails 20,000 years ago. A 2014 dig in Spain uncovered 1,500 shells at a site inhabited by Cro-magnons, who appear to have raised them for consumption (they seem to have discounted the possibility that it was a race course).

The earliest debris has been found in the Mediterranean region but remains have been found in the Americas, Africa and Asia.

Snails as a feature of fine dining appear date back to the Roman era, when a certain Quintus Fulvius Lippinus, started farming them. He’s known as the “father of heliciculture”, which seems a bit unfair on those Iberian Cro-magnons. When the Romans invaded Gaul, they were delighted to find that snails who lived in vineyards or hopfields were especially tasty, an opinion that some modern French chefs still share.

After being considered food for peasants for centuries, they found their place in French gastronomy in the 19th century, supposedly when the chef Antoine Carême had nothing else to hand to feed Tsar Alexander I and whipped up what is now known as the Bourgignonne sauce to make them fancy. His Majesty was apparently impressed and that was enough to convince the aspirational bourgeoisie to order them in restaurants. And now you can bung a pack in your freezer. That’s progress for you!

Bon appétit! Photo: Tony Cross

Fun facts about snails:

  • Most species are hermaphrodites (As a nature studies-keen child I told my grandmother this. Looking back, I think that must have been quite embarrassing for her, not the sort of thing her generation discussed);
  • They have sperm banks in their bodies, ensuring that several different individuals’ sperm fertilise their eggs (I didn’t know this, so my grannie was spared some blushes);
  • Pre-intercourse courtship can last between two and 12 hours;
  • They stab each other with a calcium spike called a love dart during the mating process (for more on the sex lives of snails click here;
  • They hibernate, burying themselves underground and growing a calcium cover over the opening in their shells;
  • They usually live five to seven years but can reach 30-years-old in captivity;
  • Some snails “sing”, emitting a sort of fart that sounds like a kiss or a plaintive cry when caught;
  • There are some 200,000 kinds of snail, terrestrial, fresh-water and marine, the latter including whelks, winkles, abalone and conch;
  • Colonialists introduced giant African land snails to some islands to provide food, leading to significant damage to their ecosystems.
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Frogs’ legs, hazelnuts and globalisation

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A grenouille rousse Photo: Holger Krisp (Wikipedia)

The French tend to translate the disparaging anglophone term for French people “Frogs” as mangeur de grenouilles (frog-eaters). I’m not sure whether it isn’t based more on alliteration than dietary preferences but there’s no denying that most English-speakers consider eating amphibians a bit odd. Personally, I’m ready to eat almost anything that won’t kill me but I’ve been learning that I should discriminate a bit on this question.

An ad in the regional free paper announces “I buy frogs’ legs, especially those from the Haut Doubs [a mountainous area north of here, which is rich in rivers and waterfalls]”.

The advertiser is after the grenouille rousse, which, despite apparently being called the  common frog in English, is a protected species. In the 1980s so many frogs were caught for food in Europe that they were in danger of extinction.

It may be caught or bred for food but in limited quantities (850,000 a year may be bred in Franche-Comté, the region which covers the Jura). It is prized for its taste of hazelnut. Make sure you eat at restaurants that specify that the frogs are local, Le Progrès newspaper warns.

Because your frogs’ legs may come from the other side of the world. Every week a plane touches down at Geneva carrying a cargo of live frogs and, concerned officials point out, they are not grenouilles rousses. They appear to be transported in string sacks. I wonder if there has ever been a mass breakout, with thousands of the little fellers hopping around the hold.

Nowadays most of the frogs’ legs imported to the EU – 4,520 tonnes between 2011 and 2020, according to Eurostat – come from south-east Asia: 74% from Indonesia and 21% from Vietnam, with 4% coming from Turkey and 1% from Albania. India and Bangladesh were the biggest suppliers in the 1990s but the trade led to a collapse in the frog population, which in turn led to a proliferation of mosquitoes and other pests and thus an increase in the use of pesticides.

A study this year found that 58 species are threatened with extinction by the trade, which it described as of “extreme cruelty”, with a knock-on effect for the environment. It called on the European Union to “take immediate action” to tighten its control of its imports.

You don’t see frogs’ legs on the menu in Paris very often but during the season – end of January to the beginning of May – they pop up in regions rich in rivers and lakes. Three million frogs are eaten every year in Franche-Comté, not counting those caught by poachers or the owners of ponds or lakes.

Its a frog-friendly environment around here Photo: Tony Cross

They’re not easy to farm. Given that they eat insects, the farmer can only try to attract their food to the ponds, which, in any case, they tend to leave for the woods when it is not mating season (I have narrowly missed stepping on some when on my walks in the forest). There are about 80 frog-farmers in Franche-Comté, fewer than 10 of them in the Jura.

So, for both gastronomic and environmental reasons, local good, imported bad. A local restaurant offered cuisses de grenouilles menus last spring. I was tempted but didn’t go. After all, gout de noisette or not, it’s really the sauce that provides the flavour and you can serve that with other dishes – snails, for instance.

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Back to blogging – Funny French food and other rural delights

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The Eventail (fan), one of the succession of waterfalls known as the Cascades du hérisson Photo: Tony Cross

I haven’t blogged for a while but, having moved to a village out in the eastern Jura département, I think I’ve come up with a few insights into French rural life that are worth writing about, so let’s see if that interests anybody, shall we?

First, a few words about the Jura – not the Hebridean island, as I had to explain to a Scottish friend who kindly offered help in establishing myself there, along with a puzzled “Why there?” – but the French département, which is not all that well-known to English-speakers (although you all know about the Jurassic Age, which takes its name from geological discoveries made here).

A valley in the Haut Jura Photo: Tony Cross

It’s a beautiful area, mountainous in the east where it stretches over the Swiss border. At a slightly lower altitude, there’s the “petite montagne”, an area of lakes, waterfalls and meadows, where the cows that provide France’s favourite cheese, Comté, graze. Then comes the revermont, a sharp descent to vineyards and villages, and then the Bresse jurassienne, a large, flat, fertile plane that extends into Burgundy.

OK, it does get cold here sometimes Photo: Tony Cross

Parisians are convinced that the Jura is a frozen tundra – they don’t tend to come here except for winter sports in the mountains. France’s coldest village, Mouthe, “la petite Sibérie française”, is in the Jura mountain range, although actually in the neighbouring Doubs, which has the distinction of being France’s coldest département. Mouthe enjoys 176 days of frost a year and is said to have experienced -41.2°C on 17 January 1985.

But that’s up in the mountains. Down here on the edge of the Bresse temperatures are not so different from those in Paris and, as elsewhere, getting warmer on average, even if my neighbour Jacques, of whom you will hear more, tries to frighten me every winter with claims that temperatures in our village sometimes go down to arctic levels.

My vilage, Sellières, on the occasion of the annual Fête de la pomme (apple festival) Photo: Tony Cross

Life here is quiet compared to the multicultural bustle of the Paris banlieue and I don’t go on reporting trips any more, so no more being robbed at gunpoint in Afghanistan, watching shootouts in Iraq or witnessing the humiliation of an entire people in the Palestinian occupied territories.

An étang (pond/lake) in the Bresse Photo: Tony Cross

But it’s not boring if you enjoy watching the seasons change, hearing the local gossip and learning about the region’s history. And rural life enjoys a special place in the French imagination. So I have some things to tell.

I’m going to start with a look at the sort of French foods that Brits and Yanks tend to turn their noses up at, item 1 being frogs’ legs. So watch this space.

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Coronavirus diary day 9 – Will key workers keep their jobs when it’s over?

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What about the shopworkers? Our neighbour, Marianne, chatted with a checkout operator at the supermarket yesterday. Despite her mask and gloves, the woman was in a state of some anxiety. She said she hoped customers would use the newly installed automatic tills to reduce risk of infection.

“I don’t use them because it’s a threat to their jobs,” Marianne commented.

Today we’ve discovered we can’t survive without these workers. Is their thanks going to be the sack because people have become used to using automatic checkouts?

And, despite all our expressions of gratitude today, are we going to just shrug and say “Oh well, you can’t fight progress”?

And the millionaires, who promised donations after the Notre Dame fire, where are they?

Have they come forward to help finance the manufacture of Covid-19 tests, masks and research into a cure? Are they turning over production to make up the shortage that means even frontline workers are not being tested?

Are governments going to force them to do so, or at least ask them nicely?

Incidentally, it seems that some never delivered on the Notre Dame fire promise.

And when it comes to footing the bill for the emergency economic packages, reconstructing our health services and repairing the damage done not only by Covid-19 but also by austerity, will the wealthy – people who have more money than they know what to do with – pay up?

We in France have some experience of a certain disruption to normal life thanks to last year’s strikes. People have already had a bit of practice in working from home. And we in the banlieue – I don’t like to translate that as “suburbs”, which may be technically correct but sounds so Desperate Housewives and you don’t get many riots there, do you?  – were partly cut off from the capital by the effect on public transport. It’s difficult enough to get Parisians to come out to the wilds at the best of times. I didn’t see some of my friends for months.

Among last year’s protesters were health-workers, already sounding the alarm that the emergency services were overloaded due to funding cuts.

France Musiques, the radio station I listen to at home, is broadcasting replays, which is very enjoyable but leads to some confusion on days, times etc. Some of the programmes have competitions to win CDs that have already been distributed or tickets to concerts that have, of course, already taken place.

I wonder how many people take part in them.

The flamboyant Professor Didier Raoult, who has been administering hydroxychloroquine (I think I’ve got the science right this time) against Covid-19 in Marseille, has quit the government’s emergency medical council in protest at what he believes is an inadequate amount of testing.

Some papers have implied that he was not very assiduous in attendance before he resigned.

It’s my understanding that the problem is upstream – there aren’t enough kits and they are not being produced fast enough, which is, indeed, a scandal.

At present 5,000 tests a day are being carried out, according to Health Minister Olivier Véran, who claims that this is more than any other European country, although that is probably not something to be hugely proud of.

Health officials say the figure will reach 29,000 a day by the end of next week but that lockdown must be allowed to flatten the famous curve before systematic mass testing can get under way.

At least pollution is down. The Paris region monitoring body has found a 20-30% drop in air pollution, compared to a normal March.

Near major roads the level is 70-90% lower than usual.

Obviously, this is due to the reduction in road traffic and air traffic.

But the amount of fine particles, which are most dangerous for our health, has not fallen because of household heating and agriculture.

The death toll in France has risen to 1,100, although that is only those recorded in hospitals. There were 240 recorded deaths yesterday. There are 22,300 recorded cases of the virus, up 2,444, 10,176 people in hospital and 2,516 in intensive care.

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Coronavirus day 8 – Queues, blues and no miracle cures

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Queueing across Champigny’s Place Lénine on Monday

‘’Have you tasted this tea?’’ my elderly Mum asked when I took her breakfast.

We’re fussy about our tea in this house but lockdown has forced us to change from the loose-leaf Darjeeling from a shop in a neighbouring town to supermarket-bought English Breakfast teabags. What a comedown!

At least it proves she’s not lost her sense of taste.

Yesterday’s trip to the supermarket – via the bottle-bank to which I made a considerable contribution – was eerie.

The streets were weirdly silent and Champigny’s main square was empty apart from a well-spaced queue outside Monoprix.

Despite being a bit more expensive than its competitors, Monoprix is the town centre’s most popular supermarket, so I had already decided to go to another one nearby. No queueing outside here but more than its usually desultory number of customers moving around a more confined space, so it wasn’t that great an idea.

The queue to get into Monoprix had gone down when I came out. They seem to be being very strict, with the security guard – who is hyperactive at the calmest of time – letting a handful of people in at a time, so I suppose I should go and stand in line on my next big shop.

The Marseille doctor, Didier Rauoult, who claimed he was successfully using an anti-malarial drug to fight the virus has turned out to be a controversial figure.

Online detractors point out that the drug’s efficacy against Covid-19 had not been independently tested or recognized by the relevant authorities. They accuse him of being an energetic self-publicist, who denied there would be a serious epidemic in January.

It also apparently has dangerous side-effects, especially for the elderly who are most at risk from Covid-19.

Still, Trump was impressed by his declarations.

France’s lockdown has not been officially extended yet, although everybody expects it to be. Prime Minister Edouard Philippe announced a tightening of restrictions yesterday but they weren’t exactly draconian. You can still go out for some exercise but only once a day and not for more than an hour – how will the police know how long you’ve been out? – and you must do so alone. Open-air markets are to close, although there can be exceptions for villages where they are the only source of food.

While we’re on the subject of food, the government has called on citizens who are laid off from their jobs to go and help bring in the crops. Is this wise? It may keep us fed but won’t it spread the virus? Philippe also called on supermarkets to buy French produce. Will buy local be a big lesion of this crisis?

At least we’re not India. Have you seen the pictures of the response to Modi’s call to bang pots and pans in honour of health-workers. People packed together on balconies and in the street, a guarantee that there will be many more patients for those hard-pressed and not very numerous people to try to heal as the virus zips around the crowds.

And then there’s the cow-piss drinking, advocated by Hindutva fanatics and causing one participant to make a legal complaint against a member of the fascistic RSS after he fell ill.

Manu Dibango has died of the effects of Covid-19. He was 86. Although he was originally from Cameroon he had become Champigny’s most famous resident.

Five doctors have died in France, confirming the scandal of the shortage of masks and tests, whose production should have been stepped up in January and should be augmented now by the requisition of companies capable of producing them.

Twenty people died in an old people’s home in the Vosges, possibly due to the virus.

The number of new cases in France went down the day of the lockdown but has risen again since, although unevenly, reaching a high point of 3,176 yesterday.

The recorded death toll since the start of the epidemic is now 860, with 2,082 in intensive care. There are 19,856 recorded cases, 6,211 in Ile de France (Paris and the surrounding region) and 4,526 in the north-eastern region that covers Alsace, Champagne-Ardenne and Lorraine.

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Coronavirus diary day 7 – force companies to make masks and tests, it’s urgent!

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Dr Jean-Jacques Razafindranazy has died as a result of Covid-19 at the age of 67. He is the first health worker in France to do so.

As the Le Pens and their admirers would say – in other circumstances – that’s not a very French family name.

Everybody knows there will be more such deaths, some of which could have been avoided if production of the right kind of masks and tests had been treated as an emergency in January, when warnings of an epidemic were already being made.

A grim story from China – in January a 17-year-old with cerebral palsy died alone when his father contracted the virus and was quarantined at a treatment facility along with his younger brother.

This is what I am most worried about with Mum – that I contract the virus and she is left alone, confused, unable to look after herself and wondering where I am.

That fear makes today’s planned trip to the supermarket – my first since lockdown started – feel a bit like going into a warzone. I woke up in the middle of the night worrying about the contagion being passed on by packaging.

The French authorities are so frustrated with people ignoring the lockdown that they have introduced a higher fine, of 1,500 euros, for being caught a second time outside without the necessary paperwork.

The lockdown is pretty much certain to be prolonged for another fortnight today.

A group of 573 health workers have written an open letter to Macron, calling on him to be “more explicit” in explaining that “staying at home is the only way to turn off the tap”.

Socialist Party leader Olivier Faure has also written to the president, calling for the requisition of all industries that can produce masks, tests, inhalers and hand cleanser. If we’re “at war” with the virus, as Macron said last week, why have these war measures not already been taken?

Faure also wants tighter restrictions on going out – close open-air markets and stop people jogging – and a plan for recovery when the nightmare is over.

Whatever one may think of his party’s record in government, this all seems both obvious and urgent.

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Coronavirus diary day 6 – a brief panic and an online apéritif

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This morning I was sitting downstairs happily noting that my 95-year-old mother was coughing less than on previous days when a groaning came from her room.

Thinking “Oh my God, she’s having difficulty breathing!”, I ran up the stairs only to find her complaining that a bit of her breakfast was stuck in her gullet.

So a bit of slapping on the back and panic over. She is, indeed, coughing less (a bit) and still no temperature.

Mum being partially sighted, we sometimes listen to audiobooks together; they come in very handy on long journeys. One was When I go to sleep, which is about a woman who forgets all her past life every night. Once she finds out what is happening, she writes it all down in a secret notebook (because, of course, there are suspicions of plots and manipulation).

Mum’s memory not being what it was, this story comes to mind when I am trying to persuade her to observe the anti-virus precautions. The gravity of the situation slips her mind and she is not keen on coughing into her sleeve, doing so into the elbow having been judged too difficult a manoeuvre, or washing her hands for any length of time.

Now we have a reminder session every morning. “What do we have to remember?” “Umm, don’t know, tell me.” “About the virus.” “Umm … cough into my sleeve.” “And?” “Umm …” “Wash you hands very regularly and for 20 seconds.”  

Last night we had our first ever aperitif à distance, with Ian Noble and Simone Slifman. Ian had been very proud of coming up with this wonderful idea. Then he went to Monoprix and found that they had special offers for this very activity. At least he can congratulate himself on being in tune with the zeitgeist.

They have come across a vulgarised version of Giorgio Agamben’s strong-state conspiracy theory – “I’m not going to fill those bloody forms out! It’s sliding towards a police state!” – which sounds like a left-wing cover for individualistic selfishness à la française to me.

An astonishing row has blown up between Labour Minister Murielle Pénicaud and the construction industry.

Madame la Ministre has accused building employers of “defeatism” and a “lack of civic-mindedness” because they want to close down sites for 10 days to adjust to the anti-virus requirements.

Yes, you read that right, the bosses want to stop work and the minister wants them to keep soldier on. The trade unions, unusually but unsurprisingly, agree with the bosses and one union leader has called on Pénicaud to resign.

She argues that building work is done in the open air, that the workers can keep at the necessary distance from each other and that they can go to work in cars rather than public transport. But, as some papers have pointed out, the prospect of providing lay-off pay to two million workers – 10% of the nation’s workforce – can’t help but be a consideration for her.

That said, I see that Italy has only just got round to ordering its building sites to close.

The latest statistics for France: 562 deaths (112 since Friday night), 14,459 recorded cases, 6,172 hospitalised, 1,525 in intensive care.

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Coronavirus day 5 – Don’t we all miss community?

Coronavirus, France
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Coronavirus spring – alone with the neighbour’s cat

Yesterday afternoon someone from the council phoned to check on Mum. He spent quite some time listening to my worries. I found this demonstration of support really moving and shed a tear or two after ringing off.

They call to check on her during heatwaves as well because we use the council’s aide à domicile service for people of reduced mobility. It’s great to know that such social solidarity exists.

Giorgio Agamben has caused a stir in left-wing social media circles with a piece claiming that the “frenzied, irrational and totally unjustified” emergency measures are a plot to normalise a “state of exception”.

The hypothesis that the international bourgeoisie is deliberately tanking the economy so as to strengthen the surveillance state seems dubious to me. Isn’t the state there to serve the economy, so far as they’re concerned?

Agamben thinks that this crisis will leave people ready to accept permanent extreme restrictions on their liberty.

I think that many incumbent governments, especially the most reactionary ones, will come out of this discredited, as will the doctrine that has led to the smothering of the welfare state.

While some will see this as a justification to huddle behind reinforced borders, I believe the value of community and solidarity will be reinforced for most people. We might even be ready to pay our taxes to pay for it.

Because don’t we all miss our communities? It’s a much-abused word – the “intelligence community” is a euphemism for spies, isn’t it? Be honest, you spooks – but the communities we form in our normal daily lives keep us fed, watered and sane, and lockdown has cut us off from them.

I don’t want to get all blitz spirit but I believe that facing a crisis that affects us all will reaffirm the value of solidarity and the social services that governments have been slashing over the last few decades.

The magic money tree was shaken in a crisis. Resources we were assured didn’t exist were found and today most people are aware that huge wealth has been accumulated and syphoned off into private hands. When it comes to paying the bill, repairing worn-out health and social services and reviving the economy, there is likely to be fury if the rich don’t foot the bulk of the bill.

Apart from that, the trip to the bakery went well. I wasn’t stopped by a cop, just as well since I forgot to take the form with me. Some but not many people on the street. The young woman serving was singing through her mask. I paid in one of those machines that takes your money and gives you your change. That’s not a Coronavirus innovation but it comes in handy now.
I also dared to sit out in our courtyard in the spring sunshine. I think I’m allowed to do that, as long as we observe social distancing. Nobody else was around so the question didn’t arise.

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Coronavirus day 4 – Don’t go to the beach!

Coronavirus, France
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A big day. I’m going to go and buy some bread. I have my form printed. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Emmanuel Macron says that “too many people” are not taking the lockdown seriously enough and Interior Minister Christophe Castaner rather colourfully criticises people “who think they are modern heroes by breaking the rules when they are really imbeciles”.

Since several local authorities have felt it necessary to close the beaches, it looks as if they may have a point.

A medical state of emergency has passed in the Senate and it looks as if the lockdown is going to be long.

One of the top health bosses, Geneviève Chêne, says that it will almost certainly be necessary to extend it. Two to four weeks are necessary just to see of the situation is getting better, she says, adding that, if China’s example is anything to go by, the curve of infections will not start descending before the middle or end of May.

While the government is scolding the people, three doctors have filed a case against former health minister Agnès Buzyn and Prime Minister Edouard Philippe.

The doctors point out that Buzyn recently told Le Monde that she had warned the government how serious the virus was in January and said that the local council elections should be postponed. That didn’t stop her quitting her post to head the Macron party’s list for the Paris city council after a solo sex tape of the previous mayoral candidate was posted online.

The shortage of FFP2 face masks reflects poorly on everyone who has been in power over the last decade. In 2005, after the avian flu outbreak, the then government (under president Jacques Chirac) decided to build up stocks in case of a future emergency. But in 2010 Nicolas Sarkozy’s government scrapped the orders, saying plenty were available in pharmacies.

Not enough for an emergency, however, and they’re all gone now. The authorities are assuring us that they are not necessary if you are not ill or a medical professional, but that doesn’t seem to be the opinion of officials in countries were there are enough face masks. Ministers have even suggested that people who aren’t ill take them to the pharmacies for use by medical professionals. Of course, nobody knows for sure that they are not ill because the symptoms may not have appeared yet.

Meanwile, 25 million masks are being distributed to some of those the government says need them and emergency production has been launched. They used to be imported from Wuhan.

Do you want to know how Mum is? She’s coughing less today, which leads me to believe that it is aggravated by pollution or pollen – a lot better than the virus. But she said she was getting out of breath, another recurring problem. Still no fever.

I still have to remind her continuously to cough into her elbow, or as near as she can get to it. I explained everything yesterday but it doesn’t stick.

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