A Tale of Two Worlds
Friday, 9 January 2026
Everyone knows the opening line to Charles Dickens A Tale of Two Cities, about its being the best and worst of times, but the other day I read on and found that the sentence in its entirety aptly and eloquently summed up the end of my 2025 and the early days of 2026. Dickens' words, written during the French Revolution, may resonate with some of you too:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way—in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.”
On the personal front, it has been an unusually tranquil and carefree interval, a season of Light. Meanwhile the bigger picture has never felt so fraught with noisy authorities talking in superlatives whilst creating a winter of despair, a season of Darkness, through much foolishness.
After Christmas in Paris with some members of our sprawling family, we went to the Perche for New Year with a subgroup of the subgroup, including a little girl who made all the Sturm and Drang that went into the building of our pool worthwhile.
The sun set on 2025 behind our grand old elm, a survivor of the Dutch disease that killed most of its brethren…
The long winter light was irresistible, as were the gentle tones when the sun rose again on January 1st…
For the first time in years, it felt like winter. With temperatures hovering around freezing, even my climate change eco-anxiety went into remission.
During early morning walks with Tasha, the setting moon (full on the 3rd of January) illuminated our otherwise dark path. The effect on the frosty ground was dramatic and indeed lunar.
On the way back, the rising sun on the opposite side of the sky began to glimmer on the horizon.
The beauty and wonder of this light orchestra quickened my step, filled my little heart to bursting and sent my fingers to the internet when I got home to figure out how such visuals could have so strong an effect on my psyche. Turns out there's a newish branch of study called neuroaesthetics which seeks to explain our reactions to beauty through science. It claims a "triad of aesthetic experience: distinct brain networks for sensory-motor, emotion-valuation, and meaning-knowledge functions in the appraisal of aesthetic stimuli."
I'm not exactly sure what that means, but my triad did go into overdrive on January 6th when it snowed real snow, the kind that squeaks and crunches under your feet.
It came down again on the 7th, blanketing the ground in enough white powder to keep us homebound (non-mountain dwelling French can deal with many crises, but a few centimetres of snow is not one of them).
Evenings, we watched the news in front of the fire, thus witnessing the tale of that other, winter-of-despair world: the invasion of Venezuela and the abduction of its president, repeated threats to a series of other countries, including erstwhile ally Greenland/Denmark, the seizing of oil tankers, the withdrawal from 66 international organisations and the killing of an unarmed woman by the ever more trigger-happy ICE (immigration agent) thugs. And we're not even halfway through January.
Bad, outrageous news has been coming so hard and fast, it's impossible to absorb the shock. But fear still creeps under the skin; there's a feeling that it's just a question of time until everything buckles.
Yesterday, temperatures shot back up to climate changed norms. The snow melted quickly under torrents of rain, allowing us to leave a day earlier than planned in order to beat some of the farmers who were driving their tractors hundreds of kilometres to block Paris in protest against the Mercosur free-trade agreement and the government's handling of yet another bovine epidemic. We also wanted to get ahead of gale winds from the storm Goretti that was already battering Ireland and the UK.
The Tuileries were closed this morning because the gusts were upon us. Tasha, always more nervous than usual in the wind, barked at the large municipal rubbish bins that had been blown in our path along the Seine. All kinds of stuff, from bicycles to potted plants, had been knocked over, including this sign:
Nothing compared to what's happening in much of the world, but warning systems are toppling in Paris too. Welcome to 2026.