More summer nothingness

We had another heat wave that broke gently. Yesterday, we had light rain in the morning and a big storm in the early evening so the sky is clean -- not really clear; it's very cloudy. It's even chilly!
Last Monday, though we were in the midst of the heat wave. The temperature got into the mid-30°C range. I went to visit a friend who was having her chemo treatment at the Hôpital Européen Pompidou way over on the far side of Paris, near the Place Ballard in the 15th. I took the RER into Paris and connected to Line 8 on the Métro, which I took to the end. The RER train was one of the new ones, air-conditioned, and line 8 was not jam-packed, so it was bearable. The treatment ended at about 3:30, so she and the other friend who had come to visit went their way and I decided to take a bus. A trip home by bus from that hospital is 3 buses. It usually takes a little over 2 hours, but I had an e-book.... I thought that at least one of the lines I was taking had air-conditioned buses, but it turns out, they don't, or they don't any more. As I was getting on the 46 bus at the Gare du Nord, the driver and I talked about the heat and he said they were eliminating the air-conditioned buses because of the COP21 Paris agreement. I have trouble believing that. If the aim is to push people out of their cars into public transport, then public transport should be comfortable. I also mis-judged the mid-summer traffic; there should have been less. The buses should have been able to go faster than usual, not slower. It took almost 1 1/2 hours to get to the Gare du Nord on the 42; my ticket was just barely valid for the 46. Then, it was another hour to Vincennes. The 114 was over-crowded, but I was one of the first on the bus, so I did have a seat. This is no way to convince people to take public transport -- almost 3 hours point-to-point. There are shorter paths, I know. I could have gone back underground to reverse my trip. I could have taken the tram from Ballard to Porte d'Orée and gotten the 46, there. My complaint is not really about the time it took, but about the discomfort. One thing I think I should also mention, though, is that 47 years ago, I would have remarked on the stench, and now, that is a thing of the past -- people wash and use deodorant.
We went to see the Christopher Nolan version of Dunkirk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_(2017_film) on Wednesday. It's quite well done -- once you figure out the time scale. What's happening to those from the beach is happening over several days, What's happening to those in the sky is in hours and those in the small boats a full day. Lots of noise; there's very little dialog. It's not really about the battle leading up to the evacuation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunkirk_(1958_film, which was shown on TV on Thursday, here) , nor about what it was like on the beach, especially for the French troops (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weekend_at_Dunkirk; "Week-end à Zuydcoote" -- the original French title). This is about the evacuation. Sure the other films are also about the evacuation, but they have more background leading up to it. This has a little background, but our heroes find themselves quickly in the sea. In fact, now having seen the 1958 film, I think this one seems to take a lot of its scenes from the end of that one. It's definitely to be seen on a big screen. I noticed it is also in IMAX -- for me, that would be too much.
We've started eating the first cherry tomatoes from the garden. The big tomatoes are really big this year and haven't started turning red, yet. I hope the first ones are ripe before we go south. The red plum tree is producing this year. The plums are not quite ripe, yet. They, too, usually get ripe when we're not here. Paul picked some yesterday, hoping I'd make a pie, today. I'd better get to it, then.

Mid-July

Let's see. We had some strawberries in May and June, but any new ones are now found by the snails and ants before we get to them. The raspberries are finished for the first crop. I've cut the branches that had fruit to make room for the branches that might have something in September. I have 3 bags of frozen raspberries in the freezer. The blueberry bush we bought in May is producing some nice fruit, but not enough for a whole dessert. The other day, we split a harvest of 10 berries. The red plum tree has lots of fruit this year. If the past serves as any indication, the plums will be ripe and fall off the tree right when we're on vacation. The greengage tree, child of the wonderful tree that was here when we bought the house, which produced such succulent plums, seems to have a branch with some plums on it this year. The old tree was chopped down several years ago, after losing yet another branch. This young tree grew right on the property line. Normally, we would have had to cut it down because you're not supposed to have trees or shrubs grow over 2m. high less than 2m. from the boundary, but our neighbor likes it and his side of the tree apparently produces more plums than ours. We just had to cut back the maple trees at the back, which I had planted to be trimmed as shrubs, but which grew into trees anyway. They were up against the boundary wall and were high enough to cast long shadows on that neighbor's yard.

Bastille Day, which is simply known as Fête Nationale, here, is over. The parade was very nice, as usual. The fact that the US President was invited was normal as this year marks the 100th anniversary of the entry of France in WWI. There was a demonstration against him on the 13th, organized by Indivisibles-France and Democrats Abroad. The consensus is that the invitation was the right thing to do, no matter who the President is. And the parade was excellent, with the sun shining and mild temperatures, so it went off without a hitch. As usual, when I see the planes flying over the Champs Elysées, I go up to my room and open the windows to see them fly over us barely a minute later. They don't fly exactly over us, some veer off to the left, over the Marne, and others fly just to the right, more over Fontenay, than Nogent. Still, we have a nice view and the noise drowns out everything.

After that ceremony, Macron flew off to Nice for a much sadder event. It was the anniversary of the 2016 terrorist attack by truck during the fireworks. It was a moving commemoration. I didn't see this last part, but have read about it this morning -- the singer, songwriter Calogero wrote a song about fireworks (Feux d'Artifices) some time ago, not for this, not right after the attack; it's a song that was already on an album of his. It's about taking a kid to see the fireworks, to put him up on your shoulders, to see the "stars", the "constellations", and so on -- you know, what people do at fireworks and what it means to them. He was asked to sing the song after the minute of silence last night. He couldn't finish it. He broke down. There were no fireworks in Nice this year. They had 86 lights up in the sky for the 86 victims.