COLUMN
Woody’s worries
Ruth Wood gets caught up in France’s retirement revolution
R
iot police blocked our path as we emerged from the Métro station at Bastille – two
rows of robocops behind a barricade of shields and vans. “Ohhhkay,” said my husband Jon with a grin. “I guess we won’t be going that way then.” Our teenage daughter Mabel
cast sideways glances at the men as we backed off . “They’ve got guns!” she hissed. “No, no,” I reassured her.
“Those aren’t guns, darling, they’re just…” but the words died on my lips as I spotted the pistols in their holsters. Ahh, Paris in the springtime. The scent of cherry blossom and revolution in the air. We’d come to the French
capital by train for a 24-hour visit from our holiday home in Brittany, keen to show Mabel the Eiff el Tower and get a bit of culture. Unfortunately, the route to our budget hotel in the Marais was now barricaded by a wall of protesters and police.
BRAD PITT FOR PRESIDENT I say ‘unfortunately’. Let me rephrase that. It was exciting, fascinating – 234 years after the storming of the Bastille prison by revolutionaries disgusted by the monarchy’s abuse of power, the very same site thronged with citizens disgusted by the republican government’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64. “Abolish Macron,” read
one demonstrator’s placard. “Raise salaries, not the age of retirement,” said another, and – one of my favourites – “If we’d wanted to be screwed by the government, we’d have voted for Brad Pitt.” Explosions and shouting pierced the air as
demonstrators let off fi reworks and hurled bottles at police. I nearly jumped out of my
skin when a siren blasted out alarmingly close by. I thought we were about to be mown down by a fi re engine, but it turned out to be a loudspeaker being wheeled by marching fi refi ghters. They too were demonstrating against the president’s pension reforms. I half-wondered if the police would down tools and join in the demo too. In the end, we had to zigzag
through the back streets to reach our no-frills hotel, which turned out to be on the main protest route. The grey-haired
hotel manager, who was surely not far off pensionable age himself, was leaning in the doorway, sucking on a cigarette and watching the waves of protesters carrying banners that spanned the street. Having checked us in, he was disgusted when I mentioned that we wouldn’t get our UK state pension until at least 67. “Ohh!” He threw his hands
up in the air. “You are like the Germans. 67? It is too old!” “You would prefer to stop
at 62?” I ventured, stating the obvious. “But of course! Wouldn’t you?” He gave me a pitying look. “Oh, it is ok for me. I can sit on my backside all day long. But a nurse? A fi refi ghter? It’s not right.” To our surprise, the demo
was over by 7pm. A mellow evening fell over the Marais. And in the morning the streets were almost deserted as we wandered back to the Place de la Bastille to eat our croissants. A street cleaner ambled by,
whistling. “Busy morning?” I asked. “Not at all,” he replied with a grin. “The night shift did all the hard work.” Later, on the train back to
Brittany, we got chatting to the
“The route to our budget hotel in the Marais was barricaded by a wall of protestors and police”
passenger opposite, a man in his 30s, with a laptop and the air of a comfortably-off work- from-homer. I asked him what he thought
of the controversial reforms, which the French president was at that very moment signing into law. He looked a little embarrassed, and when he did fi nally reply it was in English, perhaps to avoid off ending any earwigging Parisians. “You know, it was not handled well,” he began. “And they should have done a better job of explaining it to the public. But I think probably it had to happen. We will all have to work longer; it is a fact of life.”
CULTURE SHOCK I nodded, but felt a bit disingenuous, since Jon and I have every intention of ducking out of the rat race as soon as we’ve scraped together enough to fund a frugal early retirement in France. I decided to change the
subject and talk about the pleasures of Paris in the springtime instead. “Did you see all the sights?”
asked the man. “Defi nitely,” I replied,
recalling graffi ti-covered monuments, smashed shop windows and burnt-out bins still smoking as if with seething resentment. “We saw lots of things. It was great to get a bit of French culture.” ■
French citizens protest against the government’s plans to raise the retirement age from 62 to 64 106 FRENCH PROPERTY NEWS: July/August 2023
© RUTH WOOD
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
