Today I was up and about early to go to the dentist for a check up. I set off so early that I even had to pay to ride on the bus. It was too early to use my bus pass! Thank heavens for the £2 standard fare.
On the bus I was reading a detective story. The lady sitting next to me produced a book by the same author and masked if I had read it. I had not. So she gave it to me. She was going to drop it off at a charity shop so the thought she might as well give it to me. These are the kind of things that happen on buses around here!
We’ve just started watching series 3 of Lupin, a French series about Assane Diop, a rascal, a bit of a charming thief, who bases his exploits on the adventures of fictional thief extraordinaire Arsène Lupin. In this latest series he stage-manages a fall from a building in Paris, falling several stories in such a way that his fall is cushioned (I’m not at all sure by what) so that his accomplices can whisk him off to a hospital morgue and have him declared dead. They even have him buried, but in a coffin he can open up into a pre-prepared tunnel, from which he makes his escape. All good, far-fetched nonsense! But there are some splendid views of Paris. It could take over from “Le Fabuleux Destin d’Amélie Poulain” as unofficial advertising for that fair city.
Mind you, with the bedbugs crisis, maybe Paris is not the place to visit just now.
In addition, there have been threats of a terrorist attack on the Louvre and now a bomb alert at Versailles. Both tourist venues had to close to have their premises checked. So Paris is not a good place to go at the moment.
Mind you, it seems that some of this activity is part of a reaction to the situation in Israel/Palestine. Ripples of fear have spread outwards. A Jewish school in London either closed or upgraded its security, I read recently, for fear of repercussions. And Muslims have been attacked in various places. The problem cannot, it seems, be contained in Israel and Palestine. We are all involved.
And now you may be in danger of being arrested if you wave a Palestinian flag - which has led to some people at various demonstrations deliberately waving flags in a provocative manner. Soon we may be banned from wearing any kind of badge that demonstrates support from one group or another. I’m thinking back to when we used to sport Anti-Nazi League badges, back in the 1980s. We still have a couple in a tin somewhere.
Even policemen are getting told off for wearing emblems that show allegiance. It seems there is a version of the Union Jack with a thin blue line, sold to raise money for families of officers who dies in the course of duty. (According to wikipedia “The Thin Blue Line is a symbol used by law enforcement, originating in the United Kingdom but now prevalent in the United States, Canada, Australia, Belgium, Switzerland and Poland to commemorate fallen and to show support for the living law enforcement officers and to symbolize the relationship of law enforcement in the community as the protectors of the community from criminals and victimization.”) Apparently a constable in Sussex was ordered to remove the badge from his uniform. After all, you can’t have policemen showing support for charities - who knows how many badges they might stitch to their uniforms? The Met Police Commissioner has said that the Met Police uniform policy allowed officers to wear the Police Memorial Day badge, the Royal British Legion's Remembrance Day poppy and the Help for Heroes badge or wristband. That’s all! There you go!
Life goes . Stay safe and well, everyone!
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