February is the shortest month of them all, yet it felt never ending this year. It started with great expectations as the sanitary situation was getting better, like a promising light at the end of the tunnel. Life flowed as usual between going to the office or working from home, spending time with family and friends and going out to bars and restaurants. Even cinema and going to see expos were in the agenda again. During the weekends I got back to the habit of long photowalks and wandering around Paris. It almost felt like we were back to norma life before Covid. Towards the end of the month ..read more

Fourth and last week of January. Long and grey, but at the same time it just seemed to fly away. Seven peeks to the week that finished in beautiful sunshine.   ..read more

“Not much to write home about” sums up this week quite well. Three days of remote working from home and two days at the office. Omicron is really roaming in Paris, lots of people both at work and amongst our friends are getting it. We will probably all have the virus, it is now just a question of time. At the same time, most people seem to experience a milder version of it, more like a bad flu. For the first time, I’m no longer worried about getting the virus, with three vaccinations, it will hopefully be bearable. I’m feeling very tired and keep looking for symptoms, channeling my inner hypoc ..read more

This second week of the year seems endless. January is in general one of the longest months, as all the festivities and holidays are over and we are back to normal life. Well, normality is different these days, instead of being constantly in the office, I go there twice a week as we are back to three days in remote mode. I work just outside Paris, in Saint Denis, next to Stade de France football stadium. My commuting time is very reasonable for a metropolis like Paris, 35 minutes from door to door, consisting of a 10 minute metro ride and walking at both ends. At the end of last year, I was le ..read more

Happy New Year! As always, the New Year begins with plenty of projects and good intentions. One of them is to start a 365 project, making an image per day for the whole year to come. Let’s see how it goes, here is my first week. 1 - 7 January was a mixture of beautiful, light enchanted days and grim, gloomy ones when I would not even go out. With the Omicron cases skyrocketing, I worked the whole week remote from home. When it was not raining, I would take a break after lunch and go for a quick photowalk before returning to my virtual office again. In the evenings I would get lost in the exc ..read more

Bitter sweet feelings this last week of phase one (25 - 31 May 2020) of the deconfinement in France. It also happens to be the last week of May. I’m ashamed to say this, but it feels like the last week of long and fulfilling holidays. We have been through a couple of months that have probably changed our lives forever, but I’m part of the lucky persons who got through this period in really nice conditions, cocooning at home with the family. I know it is not the case for everyone and I am sorry for that. Again, in circumstances like this, life is not fair and I do feel quilty about it. The weat ..read more

May has always been the working woman’s and man’s favorite month of the year in France. Workday wise it is like a Gruyère cheese, full of little holes that let the air in and make it even tastier. We have for example two Fridays that are public holidays, as well as one Thursday, which of course calls for a long weekend. This year there is even a more pronounced taste for holidays, as most employers have requested their employees to use all pending holidays before the end of the month. So, this second week of deconfinement finds our family in holiday mood ; my husband is on holiday for the whol ..read more

Monday 11 May : the lockdown is lifted in France and we start the deconfinement. I have mixed feelings about it, I would have preferred Paris and other metropoles in the badly effected areas to stay in confinement, the thought of a second wave of infection haunts my mind. In practice, not much changes in our daily lives, we still continue working from home office and home school. It does feel liberating and a bit rebellious to go out of the apartment at any time of the day without having to justify it. I still avoid going to shops and continue home deliveries and quick pickups from a point of ..read more

The eight and last week of lockdown in France. Strangely, it is also the most difficult one. Lockdown is an acquired taste; hard to swallow first but then one ends up asking for a second helping. What seemed endless in the beginning was actually a bead of 55 days that slipped through my fingers one after another. I read somewhere that 65 000 lives were saved in France as the whole nation stayed at home and respected social distancing. We are very lucky not to have any victims within our family, friends or neighbours. I would be writing a completely different story if that was the case. Persona ..read more

  Week six. Starting on Tuesday this week we were supposed to host a young boy from Berlin, Théo. My son’s dedicated and wonderful German teacher has established an exchange programme between his school and a school in Berlin. The French kids were scheduled to travel to Berlin on 10 March for a week and their correspondent students were expected in Paris on 21 April for a week. When the French part of the exchange was cancelled two weeks before the lockdown, we felt the decision was unfair, even exaggerated. We still hoped that the German part would go on and then the French would go to B ..read more