Normally, after the parties of Bastille Day, the French begin drifting off on holiday. People disappear to country homes, beaches or resorts where they spend weeks eating, drinking and lazing. Meanwhile foreign tourists — one of France’s few growing income streams — flood the world’s most visited country.
But after a jihadist in a truck killed 84 people in Nice on Bastille Day, the French are trying to comprehend their new normal: terror attacks. As prime minister Manuel Valls admitted: “France must live with terrorism.” In just 18 months, the country has fundamentally changed.
There are three layers to French life. Layer one is everyday perfection: that glass of wine in an ordinary bistro in a commonplace street. The Germans call it “living like God in France”. Layer two is economic stagnation, the sense that set in early this century that the country’s model is stuck. In December 2014, a fairly typical survey by BVA-WIN found that only 17 per cent of French people thought 2015 would be better than 2014. That ranked France 60th out of 65 countries for pessimism. Moreover, the French were unhappier than people in other rich countries — a finding now so commonplace in happiness research that it’s known as the “French paradox”.