D-Day – déconfinement day – in France is fraught with existential angst

Monday was D-Day in Paris. D for déconfinement. This being France, déconfinement is fraught with existential anguish. "To deconfine or not to deconfine? That is the question," a senator asked in a debate.

Despite the media build-up and live online blogs throughout the day, the beginning of déconfinement was as uneventful as normal life. There was a lot more traffic in the streets, especially hot sports cars, whose owners seem to have been champing at the bit. I couldn’t help missing the ducks and swans I’d seen in the city centre under lockdown.

The clothes I’d left at the dry cleaners in early March weren’t ready, but I didn’t mind, since the whole country has been suspended under cling film for 55 days. The shop’s owner had put on a few kilos and grown a beard, apparently the de rigueur post-lockdown look.

A Europe-wide Odoxa poll published by Le Figaro showed the French distrust their leaders more than do any other nationality in Europe. Two-thirds hold a negative view of the government's handling of the crisis, compared to 48 per cent on average elsewhere on the continent.

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At least one Paris coiffeur opened his salon at midnight on Sunday, the moment it became legal to do so

I suspect the poll says more about national character than the government’s performance. In a cartoon of a Frenchman watching television news, the man shakes his fist when the lockdown is announced, shouting “My liberty! Tyrants! Dictators!” When the déconfinement is announced, he shouts again, “Capitalists! My health! Pigs!”

Designated server

BFM TV provides advice on resuming social life. Choose dinner party guests carefully. Don’t put coats on the bed, but hang them separately. If you serve an apéritif, give each guest their own bowl for peanuts or crisps. Choose a designated server so that only one person touches the wine bottle. Don’t crowd onto the sofa or around the table. Stand if space is limited. Don’t give guests the free run of your apartment. Keep them to one or two rooms. Be generous with the hand sanitiser...

The protocols for sending your child back to school, taking public transport or going to the hairdresser are equally elaborate.

I celebrated déconfinement with a 10km bicycle ride to a friend’s home for lunch with the ladies. I had to stop myself from filling out the lockdown-era form. I felt a brief burst of joy as I broke the former one-kilometre barrier. On my way back, I feared for a brief second that I had surpassed the pre-déconfinement hour of freedom.

The girlfriends and I began with a discussion about hairdressers. At least one Paris coiffeur opened his salon at midnight on Sunday, the moment it became legal to do so. Some are starting work at 8am to accommodate the logjam of clients.

Fatalities rose again sharply in the last 24 hours, from 70 on Sunday to 263 on Monday. Four new clusters have broken out in western France

A mischievous luncheon companion, an attractive professional woman, had us in fits of laughter, telling us how she teased her teleworking husband by walking across the back of the room in a red lace negligee when he was on an important video conference.

A French friend of nearly 40 years rang me on her first day back to work as an estate agent. “The market’s not dead. When people are afraid of the bourse they fall back on property,” she said.

‘Mental housekeeping’

There will be a before and after Covid-19, my friend insisted. “I’ve done a lot of mental housekeeping. I care less about clothes. I want to give more to the people I care about. I want a bigger place in my life for nature.”

Relationships have changed during the lockdown. The couple upstairs have invited the four other inhabitants of my building for drinks on Tuesday evening, a first in the two decades I’ve lived here.

When I pass them in the street in the future, I will say hello to the neighbours I’ve seen applauding from their balconies every evening. I wonder how long we’ll continue the ritual nightly homage to medical workers. There has always been something selfish about it, the idea in the back of one’s mind that one might yet need the doctors and nurses...

For despite the laughter at lunch with friends, and the hollow pleasure of expanding the perimeter of liberty from one kilometre to one hundred, Covid-19 is still very much with us. Fatalities rose again sharply in the last 24 hours, from 70 on Sunday to 263 on Monday. Four new clusters have broken out in western France.

Monday lightened the mood, but there’s an undertow of apprehension. If the pandemic is a war, this may be only a ceasefire. If the lockdown was prison, we’re only out on probation.