Don’t tell anyone, but I’m breaking the 7 p.m. curfew every single night.

Technically, it’s okay-ish—I tick the box “déplacements pour motif familial impérieux, pour l’assistance aux personnes vulnérables ou précaires ou pour la garde d’enfants” when I fill out my digital “attestation de déplacement dérogatoire ”.

What the mouthful means is that going out for “family or childcare-related reasons, or to help vulnerable people” is accepted.

Basically, around 7 p.m., I’m delivering groceries to my 90-year-old mamie and checking on her to make sure she’s actually going to eat dinner. Then I go out for a long walk because, well, fuck it, it’s 7:30 p.m. or 8 p.m., I need to clear my head, it’s bright outside and I want to give my mom some time alone at home.

Welcome to France, a country with a fondness for useless paperwork, bureaucratic rules and exemptions. This is probably the only place in the world fighting COVID with…

Wait. Translation conundrum here. It’s hard to find the right expression for what French authorities call the “attestation dérogatoire de déplacement.” Macron’s “bilingual” team (ah ah, as if…) is using “exemption certificates” but it sounds clumsy. The website also says “to combat the pandemic, download certificate of travel” so please, help the country and download yours wherever you are, I’ll let you know if COVID cases are falling tomorrow in France, merci beaucoup.

Apparently, I’m not the only one looking for the right expression because there’s a new pandemic-special addition to the WordReference bilingual dictionary:

Okay, let’s go with “statement of reasons for not being home when the government said so,” my personal attempt to describe this piece of paper (a digital version is now available) French first discovered in March 2020.

Or “curfew waiver form,” a shorter and less sarcastic option.

In March 2020, you needed a “lockdown waiver form” to leave home. A number of accepted reasons were listed—grocery shopping, physical exercise (one hour max), essential worker, etc. I wasn’t here but according to my family, everything was closed, streets were empty and police was everywhere checking “attestations.”

In Fall 2020, during lockdown v.2, schools stayed open and working from home was suggested but not exactly enforced. More valid reasons to leave home were added to the attestation.

Nowadays, attestations are required when entering France—mine wasn’t checked—, to go out after the 7 p.m. curfew and to travel more than 10 kilometres from home. There are multiple versions of the attestation and they are constantly being updated since rules change all the time—don’t bother with the April 6 update, by the way, it’s buggy.

Occasionally, the government admits the wording is confusing. When Paris entered lockdown a few weeks ago, 15 “valid reasons” were listed, including “going for a walk.” An updated version was released the same day after officials found out they couldn’t decipher the form. Then it was scrapped altogether.

French are very, very tired of filling out attestations.

I’ve only been playing this game for three weeks—and fortunately, they are no longer required during the day—but I’m tired of it as well.

So most of the time, I don’t even bother. I do whatever I can to help stop the spread blah blah blah but ticking a box hardly stops COVID case surge—vaccinating people quickly would help, though.

I’ve been stopped by the police a few times.

The first time, I didn’t even notice the police car nor did I suspect it could be slowing down for me—going from my mamie’s place to my mom’s place at 8 p.m. isn’t exactly noteworthy or at least it didn’t use to be.

“What are you doing outside?” the police asked.

Another very weird question I’ve never been asked by law enforcement.

Mind you, the four police officers were polite and let me go when I said I had just checked on my grandmother.

The second time, I was taking out the garbage around 10:30 p.m. I had a garbage bag in my hand and I was still holding the door to the building when a police car showed up and parked on the sidewalk stopping right in front of me.

“Where are you going?”

“… to the recycling bin across the street.”

“Clearly not a detective,” I told my mom. “I mean, I was holding a giant garbage bag, you’d think the police is trained to analyze situations in a logical way…”

And last night I was stopped by the police again when going for a walk, but this time the dude was bored and just wanted to chat after I explained that… I just wanted to go for a walk. Yeah, got tired of making excuses.

“People are stressed out,” he complained.

Well, no shit. I get it, nobody joins the police to spend the day—or rather the night—asking people for their attestation but don’t expect French to be happy to justify why they aren’t home. It’s infantilizing and probably useless at this stage of the pandemic.