OPINION: Menton has ramped up the radiance. June’s humidity has given way to blazing sun, clear skies, long evening hours of dreamy dusk. The beauty is everywhere – in the light, the colours, the enormous grey rock faces that back the town. The scale of the geography is striking. You can take a bus into the mountains, all the way up to Sainte-Agnès, the highest coastal village in Europe. Every afternoon, the vast limestone cliff behind the apartment is bathed in golden light.
Most restaurants and food are strikingly cheap. But up the road at the border, a starred restaurant offers a menu for €450: “The earth whispers to us a menu inspired by the available set of roots. A journey guided by the movement of sap in plants.”
The border is heavily policed. The preoccupation with illegal immigration remains, even though a bloc of left-wing political parties has managed to hold off Marine Le Pen’s far right anti-immigration party in the second round of elections.
Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie, who founded France’s National Front, called the Nazi gas chambers “a mere detail of history”. His daughter fell out with him over that, but only because he was being unhelpfully frank. Instead of rejecting his whole ethos, she worked to make the party more palatable, renaming it the National Rally in 2018.
The torch for the Paris Olympics has been carried by, among others, a 102-year-old French Resistance fighter. The prospect of politicians who are heirs of the pro-Nazi Vichy regime being involved in that was too much for the majority. But the fact remains, more people than ever before voted for the National Rally.
Early one morning, three young men ran silently along the railway line below the apartment. I watched them disappear into the heat haze. In the street, a nervous youth asked me the way to the station. I directed him, and mentioned in passing it was full of police.
That afternoon, a woman came to my door and told me she’d been attacked by her neighbour. I was about to suggest the police, when she described his weapon: 5G radiation. She had a head of wild blonde hair, perhaps frazzled by the 5G. The best defence, she said, was coating your body in aloe vera. I listened gravely to her advice.
After President Emmanuel Macron had outwitted the far right and Britain had thrown out the Tories, America slipped into a nightmare. America was in a car with a geriatric at the wheel. On a narrow mountain road, as terrifying as the route to Sainte-Agnès, the old man shouted at them to shut up. “Of course I can drive! I’m the only one who …”
Would President Joe Biden step aside after his disastrous election debate performance? Would he dig in? We were hearing America’s screams as they careered towards the cliff. The attempted assassination of Donald Trump has surely strengthened him, and only made Biden’s position weaker.
Just as Biden was damaging his legacy, refusing to go and attacking his own supporters, big donor and Hollywood actor George Clooney stepped up. His op-ed, brutally dismissing any possibility Biden could win, was notable for its vision of a Hollywood arc. Biden had been a hero in 2020, now he could be a hero again. By leaving. The golden path was open: he wouldn’t depart as a failure but as man of the hour. Selfless. The scarred old warrior finally passing the torch. Clooney’s pitch was succinct, deft, persuasive.
There were only a few possible hitches. In an email, a friend described to me her husband’s dementia. Their biggest problem, she said, is that he doesn’t understand he’s impaired.
