We were having a conversation after a concert, and I said:
C’est bon de sortir de temps à autre pour se divertir un peu, d'autant plus que j'ai passé mes dernières journées à compulser de vieux documents poussiéreux, enfermé dans mon bureau. (...) Il faut faire avec, ça fait partie du boulot, mais quand même. Écouter cette agréable mélodie... c’est comme un vent frais qui chasse les toiles d’araignées !
Here I was talking about how going to a concert on holiday makes for a nice diversion after spending an entire week cooped up in an office. Essentially, I wanted to express the idea of:
- Listening to this beautiful music... Ahh, it really blows away the cobwebs!
The expression "blow away the cobwebs" comes in handy when you want to say:
- Doing some light exercise or going for a little walk etc helps you feel physically more energetic as well as mentally more alert.
As I didn't know a commonly used phrase for this, I sort of resorted to brute force and said the phrasing above that came to mind right there and then.
Alternatively, I might have said: "Ça chasse les toiles d’araignées", or straying from the literal wording: "Ça change les idées, ça fait du bien".
I'm not sure if the literal interpretation "chasser les toiles d’araignées" works in French, to begin with. How is this idea commonly/idiomatically expressed in French?