Gnome-Trek: Episode 7. Into the Plague: Chapter 1

Europe, the Final Frontier. 

These are the voyages of the Flying-Brick ‘Gnome’. Its continuing mission: to explore our world, to seek out my kids and to hug them, to boldly go where no gnome has gone before...

Chapter 1. We are where we are.

My mission: a Blog-a-day.

If you've come here to escape the viral madness, then you will be sorely disappointed. This virus has invaded every part of our lives and thus also insinuated itself into every part of this story.

We, in France, are once again in lockdown. 

Once again I will attempt to post something every day, be it a photo, some words of wisdom, or a combination of the two. I'll try, but will probably fail on the wisdom bit...

Last time, now far into the distant past, I posted each day a photo of some random flower, insect, garden scene. After calls from you all to be silent, to desist, to shuffle off, and the occasional "Aarrgggghhhh!" I've decided to change my approach. 

This is to be the story of our last trip in the Gnome, an adventure full of the complete gamut of emotions, of highs and of the deepest of lows.

Our voyage there and back again...

We are were we are, and we are here...

A distant fog submerges Montauban. A fog that stifles, that engulfs. It is a fog of facts and of fake news, a fog of information and of disinformation, a fog of danger with no safe place. At its heart is Covid. How do we calculate our route through all of this thick soup of fact and fiction? 

There is no simple solution, there is no path to take that will be one hundred percent safe. All we do has risk and consequences, but how do we balance that against survival, against love, against a normal life, against living long enough to sup another glass of wine? 

There is no more a 'normal' life. Thankfully there remain several sups of wine...

And so these were the questions we asked of ourselves whilst planning our odyssey into the plague.

Do we go or do we stay? How do we get there? How do we get back? How do we calculate the risks when the risks are constantly changing? How do we protect those that we are holden to shelter from harm? How many bottles of wine do we take?

When we originally planned this trip, this adventure, this odyssey, there was no doubt. It had been many months since seeing our close family in the UK. Too many months due to this pestilence. All we had to do was go there, visit each house which were each self isolating, share our love, then bugger off back to France. 

Simple.

And yet, simple was the last thing that it turned out to be; simple it was not. Nothing went according to plan. This was a voyage into chaos, an adventure full of unforeseen risk and was fraught from the very start.

This is our story...

Tomorrow: Chapter 2, the surprising sequel to Chapter 1...

Exciting isn't it?