Heroes Not Zombies

I saw this graffiti on traffic lights in France some years ago and I’ve seen it a few places since. If you look carefully you’ll see someone has drawn a smiley face on the green light, a frustrated one on the amber and a sad face on the red.

I suppose most of us don’t like having to stop at traffic lights, and I remember an Italian friend telling me, as we drove through Naples, that stop lights “were just advisory”!

However, I reckon that in Life it’s a good idea to hit the pause button from time to time.

Here in rural France, most commerce is closed on a Sunday, although a handful of supermarkets now open on a Sunday morning. And in the smaller towns there’s usually a weekday when pretty much everything is closed. That all took a bit of getting used to coming from a seven day open economy in the U.K. but once you learn that’s how it is here, you adjust your plans accordingly.

Sundays still sound different here. Even though I live in the countryside, not in a city, it’s particularly and noticeably silent on a Sunday.

Lunch time is often a two hour period here too and there is always a little burst of traffic bang on midday as people hurry home for lunch. Even some really big stores close for a couple of hours for lunch.

I think it’s a good thing to hit the pause button from time to time. I appreciate that slower pace.