The heat. And First Ladies of France!

You know that it’s hot when the lady who walks her dog every morning at 8.30 and ALWAYS wears her coat and scarf (I swear she only gave up gloves and a wooly hat in June) is wearing a summer dress. Okay, I exaggerate about the hat and gloves but it remains a fact that she wore her coat, all buttoned up, and a scarf wrapped round her throat right up until last week. I know it can be cool first thing in e morning but not that cool.

This morning the temperature gauges were already marking 26 degrees at 9.00! We all have short memories and have forgotten that not long ago we were complaining that summer was not getting going so that now we can moan about it being too hot. Down at the pool the cries about the water being tooooo coooold - ¡Está congelada! - to comments ablut how warm it is and how it is not refreshing - ¡Está calentita! ¡No refresca!

The shower is colder than the pool water so at least people are showering before getting in the pool. Well, more people are showering before leaping in. Others just throw their stuff down on the grass, remove their outer clothing and leap in regardless of how they might splash all and sundry in the process. And that’s just the adults! The ten- to thirteen-year-olds are busy showing off that they can do summersaults as they leap in!

But the pool remains an excellent way to cool off.

 Here are a couple of odd heat-related facts:-

In the Netherlands, authorities closed some motorway sections after the heat melted the road surface.

In France, four nuclear reactors have been closed to avoid raising the temperature of rivers whose water is used to cool reactors and then returned.

At least so far we just have heat!

In an article about Brigitte Macron and what a popular First Lady of France she is I came across this comment: “It makes a nice change from recent French first ladies such as Cécilia Sarkozy or Valérie Trierweiler, the former partner of François Hollande: both women always looked uncomfortable.”

That’s odd, I thought to myself, I have never heard of Cécilia Sarkozy!

So I looked her up on the internet.

She is a former model and public relations person. Sarkozy, not yet president of France, officiated at her wedding to someone or other. In 1988 she left her husband for Sarkozy. They married in 1996. She was a kind of political aide as well as wife to Monsieur Sarkozy but in 2005 she left him for somebody big in media. She clearly is a lady who gets around.

Sarkozy and Cecilia finally divorced a month after he became president. That explains why I had never heard of her. She was already out of his life.

In the meantime Sarkozy had met singer/songwrite/bit of an actress Carla Bruni not long after separating from Cécilia and before we knew it they were married. I already knew about her because I sued her songs in my French lessons.

Now, I have a theory that it was Carla Bruni, all slim and fashionable and used to being in the public eye, who made the role of wife of the President of France into that of First Lady, American style. Before that you never really heard much about the wives. Or in some cases about the mistresses for that matter. Governing France was a serious business and not to be mixed with social stuff like wives and what they got up to.

But Mrs Macron is apparently a popular lady.

“A recent poll by Paris Match found that 67% of the French had a very good opinion of the president’s wife. They were fonder of Brigitte Macron than of any other French first lady in history except Bernadette Chirac. She is said to receive 100 letters every day at the Élysée palace, far more than her predecessors. Supportive yet discreet, an independent woman with character and style but without political ambition for herself, she seems to have struck the right chord with the nation.”

“But her popularity goes beyond the day-to-day job. The fact that she faced the scandal of leaving her husband for a former pupil who was the same age as her children, in provincial France, is seen by many as showing her resolve. In fact, being 25 years older than her husband perhaps increases her appeal with the French. The country has always boasted alluring mature female figures. Remember the 1940s star Arletty; think chanteuse Juliette Gréco, actresses Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Huppert and Juliette Binoche: all women whose talent, wit, intelligence and character played as big a part as their beauty.”

One suggested reason is that she comes from a family of chocolatiers. Maybe she gives sweets out at meetings and on walkabouts.