The last normal-ish photo

There is a new hashtag trending on trend world. People are posting the last normal picture they took before lockdown.
I searched my phone and this is the last « normal-ish » picture I found. I look back at my last normal day with my family. It was on the 29th of February, a bissextile day!

What’s normal about this picture is that the little one is chewing his coat, as he does, and that the tiny one is sleeping in the sling on his daddy. I take this picture sipping a coffee in a takeaway cup because I haven’t slept very well. This is because of the tiny one. As usual, I feel a bit bad that I did not take my re-usable cup, which has been used only a handful of times in two years. And then I think about what my brother would say: « We are all doomed anyway ». Well, for once (hehe), he was right.

What is not normal about this picture is that we have a scooter with us. Scooters, a friendly green-haired girl later told us, are not allowed in the Royal Botanic Garden. The little one was not supposed to zoom down the hill slaloming between visitors. Sorry people. Ah, and it’s not raining.
After that day everything was Covid-tainted, even the rain.
The virus only really started to be on my radar at the very start of March, when Italy - not the entire country mind you -  started to get waves of patients with bad pneumonia. I was then selfishly getting worried about the number of healthcare workers getting very sick.
I am not going to lie to you, I did not see that one coming, at all. And, commenting on what could have been done better is a very boring game.
So here’s to normal days, whatever this means.

#mylastnormalphoto (copyright Carrie Bradin inc.)

Brexit and the shrinking of possibilities

I have been invited to a wedding in France next spring to celebrate the union of two English people, who live in Switzerland. I met my friend who is getting married in Australia over ten years ago now.

Then, the world seemed a bigger place, at least to me. The European Union was not big enough to contain our travel appetite it seemed, and we flew to Sidney. On separate planes, but from the same place, a place we called Europe.

We grew up in an Europe that was expanding.

As a young French teenager in 1992, I remember receiving the Maastricht treaty in my parents’ mail box before the referendum. Opening it I had the fuzzy feeling that this was something big. I will admit that I did not make it further than page three although I pretended to (as probably 99% of the French population of voting age), and did not understand a word of it.

But we did talk about it at school, what it would mean for us and all. Of course the discussions were largely biased, but we knew this too. Standing behind the treaty that would create a closer union made sense for young souls. Even more so as, close to us just on the other side on the Adriatic sea, the Olympic stadium of Sarajevo was about to become a war victim's cemetery.

Now the world is shrinking again. Teenagers at secondary school discuss Brexit, walls in Mexico, closed borders in Europe, far right etc.

If I was a teenager today, especially in the UK, I would have a silly haircut and feel I have reduced possibilities.

I understand the frustration of some of the people who voted to exit the European Union, especially those whose perspectives did not really expand, ever.

But look at the main Brexit campaigners, rich, white men in their late 50s, who will never suffer from the consequences of a leave vote. Meanwhile, the people whose horizon was limited face even more barriers.

I want to be proved wrong, but only time will tell.

Women and men born before the Second World War have seen what division and extremism bring. In fairness, as long as you don’t turn a blind eye, you don't need to have lived through the war to know. Don’t be a selfish sod, they will tell you.

When my friend will get married, I might have a tear of joy for her, and a tear of sadness for the Europe we almost had.  

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