Electricity is one of those things you never notice is cool until it starts missing. EdF -- the French Electricity Board -- had over-estimated my electricity and gas consumption by a factor of three. That's quite normal, they're supposed to make estimates and check them twice a year, and I'm very keen on energy savings.
What normally happens in such cases is that I simply send them a letter to inform them of my actual consumption, and they nicely reissue a bill with the correct amount (and these days, I definitely need to save whereever I can). The strange part however, is that there seems to have been a postal system problem (something very rare here). They never received that letter, and I never received their warning that they were going to cut me off if I didn't pay.
Of course, that's not exactly what I needed given the current situation. I could go to friends' places to do ultra-urgent stuff (or just look at what was going on online in order to check that the web still existed) but I can't work that way, no more than I can catch up with email stored here. Sorry to all those that got an "I'll answer soon" email and saw that "soon" grow longer (or worse, those that didn't even get that mail). I'm rushing to get on top of things, and whatever it takes I'll eventually manage.
The current political situation here isn't helping me much find motivation. However, and many thanks to that, yesterday's demonstrations were awe inspiring and went straight to my heart. Having climbed on the Bastille's monument to see the crowd, I had to bite my lip not to cry. People. All over. With no end in sight. All of them smiling, singing, dancing, and shouting anti-fascist slogans. The cops counted 400.000 people in Paris alone, but by their own word they know it's an underestimate because they didn't have agents to count in all places, and people were spread very far. The RG (a form of internal intelligence agency) counted 950.000 people, which is probably closer to reality.
No such amount of people had gathered together since the Liberation in 1945. Grenoble, my medium-sized hometown, had already broken its record saturday with 25.000 people on the streets, and broke it again yesterday with over 60.000. Some towns had never had a demonstration before. Non-official police estimates gathered from journalists and government people state that there were circa 3 million people in the streets of France yesterday. To all of you that were there or with us, my deepest thanks.
More amazing still, we could have been far more numerous if the conservatives hadn't been against demonstrating (some of them are preparing alliances with the fascists in order to win the parliamentary elections). After the 21/04 shock, it's an immense pleasure to know that this is indeed not a fascist country, far from it.
Anyway, back to hyperactivity to sort things out in my life. Sunday we'll give the fascist a big deserved kick in mouth, and then we'll take care of the crook in the months that follow.
Ami, entends-tu le vol noir des corbeaux sur nos plaines?
Ami, entends-tu le cri sourd du pays qu'on enchaîne?
