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Other changes take place more obviously - the trees growing on the mountain-sides change colour with the seasons, mature, grow old and finally die. The cows go up to their mountain pastures in the Spring and descend again in October when it gets too cold and the grass doesn't grow sufficiently well to nourish them. In the town, things happen at a greater pace. In the modern shopping mall, there are seats for those, and there are many of them, who simply wish to sit there, while the shoppers weave their way around the concourse and go in and out of the shops with their shopping bags. But even the people occupying the rather comfortable brown faux-leather armchairs and settees eventually move on and their places are taken by others. Some are waiting for a friend, some struggling with a baby, others chatting on their mobiles or tapping away on their lap-top computers and using the free wireless web connection to send e-mails to people who are who knows where. In the Mall, there are of course toilets for the shoppers but, here there is an indication of the slowness with which change can happen in a society: there is a lady sitting at a desk solemnly taking the princely sum of 30 centimes from each person who wishes to avail themselves of the facilities. Even in such a busy mall, I should be amazed if her takings even covered her own salary, never mind the other costs of employing her. But that's tradition. In the old town, a conservation area, there is scaffolding at the front of an old block of flats, one of many which, shoulder to shoulder, line a narrow street. On the opposite side are shops built under arches in the old-fashioned way. The facade of the flats hasn't changed in centuries, apart from the names listed at the main entrance, but if you peek around the back of the scaffolding, you can see that the whole of the inside of the block is no longer there. The four storey building is now just a set of external walls. No doubt it will again become apartments, but this time, far more luxurious and expensive than before. The outside, though, will give no more than a hint of the changes which have taken place within. On the inside the new owners will hear the nearby Church bells striking just as loudly as did the previous owners. Across the road, the shopkeepers sell their vegetables, meat, newspapers, curtains and wine. In a sense, nothing much has changed, except that the tills are now electronic and the International Herald Tribune which I bought had been transferred electronically from New York to Paris to be printed and distributed throughout France. And so it was actually that day's edition. But the market is still there. Every Friday, for cash, you can buy gnarled vegetables which the supermarkets would reject, but which at least have some taste. You can purchase cheeses of every type and so many different varieties of lettuce, apples and pears, much of which is grown by the people who run the stalls. They are market gardeners as well as stall holders. The main change is perhaps that you can now also buy parsnips, something more or less unknown to the average French person, except by way of a dim ancestral rural memory, but now coming into fashion because of the invasion of the English. For many years, the one New Year resolution which I have kept is not to make any New Year resolutions. So I have not resolved to make any profound changes to my life. But change will happen anyway both to me and to everyone and everything-else. Change happens all around us, quickly and slowly, obviously and imperceptibly. In fact, the one thing that is a constant backdrop to our lives, the one thing that never changes, is change itself. |