From summer to winter in 24 hours. The hottest spring on record was immediately followed by the coldest June 1st in living memory. The thermometer barely hit 9 degrees here, and some alpine resorts had over 40cm of snow, which was ironically the heaviest single snowfall so far this year. And for the start of the Ascension bank holiday weekend, holidaymakers on the Côte d'Azur shivered beneath umbrellas while those on the Channel coast basked in warm sunshine.
One day of rain did nothing to alleviate the drought that is causing great concern in France. Water levels even lower than in the famous drought of '76; restrictions virtually country-wide; arable farmers not allowed to irrigate crops; cattle farmers forced to use stocks of winter feed to keep their herds alive. And the E-coli outbreak is only making things worse. Vegetable sales in France have dived despite there being no case here that's not associated with travel to Germany. The words extreme and irrational come to mind...
Bringing up baby sometimes produces similarly perplexing behaviour. All the sleep training of the last 3 months seems to have paid off handsomely recently: la petite gets tired, we put her to bed, she immediately starts screaming, we shut the door and it's like flicking a switch - instant silence. Marvellous, even if it may be partly because she's just discovered where her thumb is. Less wonderful are her moods when she's particularly hungry, sometimes getting so wound up and intent on screaming that even even shoving a teat in her mouth doesn't distract her. The only thing that stops the screaming is to get up and walk around with her, and then she'll quickly become calm enough to feed. Other times, when she's fed in time, she'll grin and giggle enough to melt the coldest heart. We're learning slowly, very slowly...
