Deep in autumnal France, it’s eerily quiet except for a flock of magpies in the trees — an omen of ‘death and hard times ahead’, or so I read on a website for druids which is as informative as any of the more mainstream sources about the chances of successful resolution of the euro crisis.
‘Le plan sera decidé mercredi’ declares the most mainstream, Le Figaro, in the de haut en bas tone of a paid-up member of the Euro-establishment. But my neighbours here are more agitated by the second story, ‘Rugby: la defaite avec panache’, and at least mildly interested in the third: ‘Carla et Giulia sortent de la maternité’. What historians may tell them was the final countdown to destruction for the single currency is largely passing them by.
I can’t decide whether to admire them for maintaining a more balanced perspective than we Peston-fuelled British news junkies do, or whether to burst into the village bar waving a strangled magpie and demonstrate with their own dominoes what will happen to their banks and their savings if the bodged compromise Sarkozy and Merkel at last announce falls short of market expectations in the next few days.
But meanwhile I close the shutters against the cawing of the birds, pour myself another glass of rough red wine, and contemplate a philosophical question — which is whether, this time round, the anti-capitalist protesters have a valid point.
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