Three hundred million pamphlets have been delivered to French homes, containing taxpayer-funded appeals from each of the twelve Presidential candidates to voters. On Sunday, the French will vote.

I know you’re dying to understand it all.

Nearly everyone I know in France who can vote is voting for Nikolas Sarkozy and everyone thinks ultimately he will win. That is mainly a reflection of the wealthy area we live and privileged groups we mix with. Across France barely one in four voters will tick Sarkozy. He is consistently polling in the high twenties. The Socialist candidate, Ségolène Royal, is in the low to mid-twenties. If those two make it through to the second round run off between the two highest polling candidates, Sarkozy is polling a lead of a couple of points on average - not much more than a statistical dead heat.

But look closely. In the first round, Sarkozy is supported by a few percent who will end up voting for the ugly racist slug Jean Marie Le Pen. Second, Royal's support is much higher among younger voters, who have cell phones not landlines and who are therefore under-sampled. Some analysts think the gaps might close up, Le Pen will come up strongly, and Royal pull ahead in the second round.

Madame Royal's support dipped sharply in mid January and hasn't recovered. It almost all went straight to Francois Bayrou, He was touted for a few weeks as a 'centrist' but closer inspection revealed he is a run-of-the-mill European christian democrat. The basic idea of christian democracy is (a) post-war rejection of socialist softness on the soviets (so in Italy Romano Prodi could be a christian democrat who now governs with socialist support ); plus (b) corporatist economic policy based on industrial development of heavy industry; plus (c) a value system that says rich people should look after the poor as a charity project, intervene like a bunch of know-it-alls and take a paternalistic, slightly illiberal approach to social issues.

If Bayrou gets to the second round he will probably win. Everyone wants to stop whoever he would face more than they want to stop him. But his support peaked in February and he is now stuck in the high teens. Unless he can break more away from Sego, he is a goner. If he gets knocked out on Sunday some of his supporters will go to Sarkozy, but the majority will go back to Royal, from whence they came.

If you had to find a New Zealand politician like Ségolène Royal, it would be Laila Harré. She is striking, capable and intelligent, but prone to public sulkiness and completely unable to form alliances with anyone at all. She is easily the most left wing of Europe's major social democratic leaders, although she won the nomination by running to the right of her party and also promising to change France. Senior Socialists have refused to back Sego - like Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who is the closest the Socialists have to a potential third way finance minister; the genial vegetable Lionel Jospin, a lump of porridge who didn't make the second round as Socialist candidate last time; and Laurent Fabius, who was prime minister when the French blew up the Rainbow Warrior, helped orchestrate the cover up and now claims it was all nothing to do with him. Nice guy. Unlike Ms Harré, Sego has a compelling informal touch - some have speculated she may promote abandoning the formal 'vous' form, in favour of the familiar 'tu' - which would be a cultural revolution. She can be hardline on social issues - she supports compulsory military training for urban trouble-makers. She advocated more homes should fly the French flag with pride.

Royal has praised Britain's more flexible labour laws and low unemployment, though she has never met Tony Blair. Nikolas Sarkozy made a point of flying over to be photographed with him.

If M. Sarkozy were a New Zealander he would be a blend of Winston Peters and John Banks. He is frenetic, cynical, given to inflammatory language about social misfits, he hammers populist themes and he's somewhat cuddlier on close inspection than the brutish larriken-come-good image he likes to play in tv news clips. He advocates mildly right-of-centre economic reforms that would upset very few applecarts and on this score the Economist magazine is backing him. But he has spent ten years in government, achieved nothing and backed down every time there has been concerted opposition. There is no chance he will do anything much.

His support is mainly built around two pillars: Economic reform and immigration.

His platform pledges repeal of the 35-hour working week. He might have aimed for deep microeconomic reforms - why is there a law prohibiting shops from holding sales outside two mandated seasons? But opposition to micro-reform and deregulation runs very deep. It's just mad that most people cannot be paid to work longer hours even if they want to - they simply go on to salaries and do the extra hours unpaid. Meanwhile, misguided first-job protections have resulted in nearly everyone taking a first job that is unpaid. The jobs are called 'internships'. They are deeply exploitative opportunities to take on free labour. Employees get no protection but hope for employment references. Labour reforms are critical, but opposed by extraordinarily powerful unions and interest groups.

Everyone says they want the economy shaken up, but there is little consensus on how. Most American and British commentary claims the French economy is struggling. It isn't. It is under-performing on employment, and it is growing more slowly than it grew during thirty post-war years. But it has been growing at the average of developed countries in this decade, the French standard of living is far higher than ours, French companies are some of the most dynamic in the world, it owns more intellectual property than any country, it has many of the world's strongest brands, the world's most global retailer and ten of Europe's forty largest companies.

Sarko would try to style something like the nordic country reforms that have produced vital economies and still maintained high levels of social protection. They also have stingingly high tax rates.

Sarkozy's opposition to illegal immigration is a much more popular strength than economic reform. He subtly links immigration to crime and violence in the metro areas with the highest jobless rates - his talk of washing 'rascals' out with a brand of high pressure hose helped create the anger around last year's car-BQs in the Paris outskirts.

It's common to hear voters blame immigrants for causing unemployment in the same breath as condemning them for being so commonly unemployed. France has a vigorous belief in assimmilation. The 'equality' in its revolutionary slogan means everyone should be treated the same. Sarkozy is seen as threatening equality because he supports preferential positive discrimination for the disadvantaged urban young.

High levels of social exclusion, combined with France's comprehensive social protections, have left many taxpayers worried about paying welfare costs for outsiders. While the EU has brought a lot more East European workers into France, and they've had a share of resentment, veiled racist comments about French Africans and Arabs are ubiquituous in social conversation.

Sarkozy has made a central plank of his campaign total opposition to Turkey ever joining the EU. The policy is popular, but it would be disastrous. Turkey is a secular state with a higher per capita income than Poland, Romania and Bulgaria, which are all in the EU now (and Turkey ruled half of Europe back in the Ottoman days.) If Europe turns its back on a modern secular muslim state it will face a century of instability.

Opposition to Turkey is not limited to the right, however. There is a brace of Trotsykites and unreformed communists representing various shades of the insane left, and hogging nearly ten percent of the vote mainly by dressing up their anti-foreigner messages as being pro-worker. Most have run for President before and last time round they knocked the left clean out of the race, leaving the final round a non-contest between Le Pen and Slaphead Jack (Chirac). Royal fears their power to do the same this time too, while Sarkozy is fending off a couple of swivel-eyed rural conservatives. Far left posters appeared alongside those of neo-fascists opposing the EU constitution in 2005 and while the rhetoric is very different it's still very hard to see how far left and far right here differ on major economic and social issues. Bayrou aside, polls indicate there has so far been no surge from the outside this time.

The promises of Sarkozy and Royal have been independently costed and both would massively increase the rapidly growing public debt. Sarkozy probably has the greater ability to manage the economy better, but in a better world his opposition to Turkish EU membership - ever - would make him unelectable. As it is, he will probably go through to the second round as top qualifier.

It was Josie's last day at work, so eighteen of us went here for dinner: KIWI CORNER

Eighteen was about six too many for the table. Oddly there was kangaroo on the menu, so we sang Waltzing Maltilda, shamefully, more lustily than we sand Pokarekare Ana.

We ordered Cloudy Bay sauvignon blanc. Yeeeahhhh. Sour, baby, how it should be. I had green-lipped mussels, sadly smothered in something crusty - though tastier than the European cockles that pass for mussels. And then I had possibly the best lamb I've enjoyed in France.

As we get ready to leave France, spring is setting in for the third time since we arrived. Yesterday the temperature gauge outyside the chemist here reached 29 degrees at 5 o'clock. I've sen it as low as minus seven, so I'll take it, although another gauge down the road indicated 26. It was more than shirtsleeves warm. The weekend forecast is up to 30.

The trees are putting on their twinkling green sparkle again. The tables falling out from the cafes are laughing and playing in the evening warm. Lovers are lighting up and flirting and the air has gone soft.

We'll miss this.

Meanwhile, Bernard Laporte backs Sarkozy; Yannick Noah is for Royal.

Campaigns were out in force in the market this morning, banging pamphlets into the hands of passers-by.

M. Sakozy had the most numbers out, Madame Royal's campaign looks the most professional and creative, and M Bayrou's was easily the most visible and energetic, with cheery smiles and bright orange shirts.

To a political communications strategist like, say, me, the campaigns with only days to go before a vote look moronic. They are all handing out multi-page booklets. Well who the hell is going to read them? They should be handing out materials focused sharply on their political advantage. None were.

Bayrou is fading. His campaign literature is dull. His supporters have that vacuous cheery grin of time-share sales stalls.

Le Pen's campaign was absent from the square, even though his polling approaches the levels of the leading three. Not surprising. Our market is the centre of one of only two electorates in France to have voted Yes! on the Euro constitution, whereas Le Pen is a belligerent racist prick and a holocaust celebrator.

Sarkozy's turn-out is not surprising. This is a rich area next to the township Neuilly where he made his political start as mayor at age 28. His campaign materials are diabolically bad. Dated, staid and uninspired. Analysts suspect he is getting some Le Pen support in polls that will switch away from him to the oink in the privacy of the voting booth. If that happens then Ségolene Royal will finish first and enter a run-off against Sarko - though she is still expected to lose the run-off section.

In recent weeks I have heard both negative and positive Royal comments increase. While the buffoonish right-wing press continue to hype Sarkozy (and soft-pedal Le Pen) and write in cartoonish slogans (Charles Bremner is a world-class tit) the election is no longer a referendum on Sarkozy. Royal has surged back by firing her socialist party machine and reverting to the casual insurgency that stormed France last year.

Who actually knows what either would do? Their campaign policies are either unbelievable or trite. Sarko, for example raves about immigrants fitting into French culture and speaks of headscarves in the same breath as female circumcision. Excuse me? His slogan - together, change is possible - is slick.

Ségolene has one I might steal somewhere: Respect for all, progress for each.

Not bad, eh?

The Queen of Paris bloggers, petite, lost her job last year and has won in the industrial tribunal. Must have been uncertain time for her, but from the outside the chance of an employer winning an industrial tribunal hearing in France seem fairly slim. Or unfairly...

You can see why she's the city's top blogger in this piece she's written for the New Statesman.

Anyway, apparently a central reason for firing her was that in her then-anonymous blog she called her boss a 'twunt.' Which, clearly, he is.

Word of the day, don't you think?

How to skin a rabbit.

(Not for the queasy.)

I've been reading this blog for ages. It's an excellent foodie insight. That hare is huge. Until it gets chopped up.

On Saturday, after wandering around the Marais for a while, where I bought a f.off pair of Italian leather boots and a €130 Cavalli belt (despite not even being gay), we went to the Lizard Lounge - described in some circles as the best bar in the world - where most of our group drank pink mojitos, though I eventually settled on a French vanilla martini.

Hmmm...

It's full of the 'turtle neck' Anglophile French men who only pounce on the women once their men are in the loo

May have happened, who knows? I was in the loo at the time.

We had dinner at Georges restaurant on top of the Georges Pompidou centre. Very cool ultra modern theme. Amazing view over Notre Dame and out to the Tour Eiffel (popular local land-marks, you know). Ridiculously over-priced. They even kindly offered to look after our coats and then whacked us €10 each to get the back. Plain food. Good cocktails.

The wait staff are mostly supermodels in very short skirts. They ignored us most of the night, which might have cut their sales by half. I told Daniel, who was over from NZ, I would try to get their attention to order. He said he had spent most of his life trying to work out how to get the attention of beautiful women and felt right at home being ignored.

Did I mention the post-modern décor? Okay it was cool.

The next night we dined here, Au Petite Riche.

Food and wine from the Loire, with that distinctive French heavy emphasis on protein. When the fois gras arrived Victoria from NZ and I stopped talking while the rest of table gabbed, because something that good leaves no room to be doing anything else with your mouth.

The walls are hung with signed photos of every minor French celebrity from the young Jacques Chirac (1971) and not so young Franky Mitterand, to gorgeous Catherine De Neuve.

In France, apparently, there is one April fool's joke. Prepare yourself for this.

Oh what an hilarious jape.

Before I tell you, make sure you put on some tight clothing or some such to ensure you don't split your sides.

Ready? OK.

Every April first they put a paper fish on each other's backs. And laugh heartily.

That's it.

That's the French April fool joke.

So ubiquitous is this humour, the day is called, not April Fools, but 'poisson d'Aprile'.

Maria came home yesterday. April second.

She produced a piece of paper and asked me to show her how to draw a fish. I saw her concentrating very hard with a pair of scissors. Then she came up to me and said 'Dad you've got something on your back!' And craftily sellotaped her handiwork on in a way I would not have noticed at all if I had been unconscious. Maria and Carlo manoeuvred around behind me, pointed and giggled and slapped each other with pleasure.

Later when Mummy came home the kids greeted her with a furtive hug from behind. After a few minutes I pointed to Mummy's back and said 'oh look, there is a fish on your back.' I may have said it in the flat inevitable monotone of the straight guy setting up the zinger.

"Oh what's this? Who put this fish here?"

Maria, whom I think we can now agree is fully French, laughed so much she actually fell off her chair. We will have to sew up her sides.

Okay it has taken two and a half years but I have learned to love certain red wines - the Bordeaux grave is chief among them. I have discovered the sauterne.

But oh yes I miss the Marlborough sb.

Yarm.

Maybe I'll blog being back and maybe I won't.

The blogs will change when I get home to NZ. There will be one on comms, media, ads and stuff over at sugarmedia.tv (not there yet), and there will be one on my eclectic take on politics and decadence - that will probably be here.

In the meantime there is stuff to say.

The world's largest fetish festival opens in Paris a few weeks.

Check out the dress code.

Think I'm washing my hair that night.

The third Thursday of November is the day annually when the beaujolais harvest comes to town. I brought home a couple of bottles of home and Josie wrinkled her nose in consternation.

"I thought beaujolais is meant to be rubbish."

"It is, apparently, but there must be some reason everyone drinks it now."

You can tell we are wine snobs with deep knowledge of the juice, despite knocking back a little EVERY DAMN DAY of our lives.

Suspicions were hardly allayed by the label of one, telling us it was pisse-dru.



'Thick piss.' Sounds like my kinda wine.

We chilled them a little, knocked the scab off and...well really quite good, I thought. A light and easy red. I still struggle with the big cabernets and merlots and the French pinot noir must be the most over-rated drink in the world.

But to wash down some gorgonzola slapped on chunks of pain de campagne fresh from the boulangerie... oui. Oui, oui, oui.

Ségolène Royal has won the socialist party nomination to run for President next year.

She is the only French Socialist with a chance of winning.

Her policies are either vague or odd. But she is certainly tough and unmistakably charismatic.

So, were I working on one of the campaigns, would I rather be in her position or that of M. Sarkozy just about now?

The truth is, both are eye-catching politicians, though flawed -- as they all are, baby. They all are. Neither looks like they have a flaw that makes them unelectable - such as Lionel Jospin's terminally dull personality, which doomed his candidacy five years ago, or (US Democratic contender) Howard Dean's air of fringe anarchy.

Both have been around long enough to have solid campaign skills and teams. Neither would surprise if they said something that ran the whole train off the rails. Neither is as moronic as George Bush or sleazy as Baldy McSlaphead.

Sarko is more pro-American and less patient with French statism, which makes him appealing. But he dog whistles to racists, so the sooner he is buried, the better.

Ségo panders. I'm not too worried that she is consistently seen as ambitious, self-serving and calculating: Those are indispensable qualities for successful political leadership (regrettably, but stilll...fact).

Who has the better strategic position today to win the Presidential elections in late April and Early May '07?

Sarko has the advantages and disadvantages of incumbency. He can control the agenda better. But he is also forced onto the defensive. He has mostly distanced himself from both President Slaphead Jack and Prime Minister Villepin - not easy for the most powerful minister.

But to set the agenda one has to propose ideas and for French governments that's a bad thing: any suggestions for change bring scorn; protests pour into the street, the talk shows and the newspapers. It always ends with politicians running away to hide. Sarkozy has been pretty good at making provocative comments without putting much weight behind them.

Despite the entrenched refusal to do any actual changing, there is rising political demand for change. Of course, exactly what change is the problem so no one is defining the change needed.

Anyway, I'm not convinced France needs radical change, so much as re-orientation and adaptation. Both, realistically, offer that.

But a mood for change is bad for incumbency. Overall, then, incumbency is maybe a net negative for Sarko.

Ségo has tidied up the nomination early and should be able to rally her party united behind her. Sarkozy isn't even sure if he will run against Chirac and could face a debilitating, resource-sapping, party-splitting glide path into the finals. Chirac probably won't run because he knows he would be humiliated. But he can damage and even destroy Sarko, which forces Sarko to play some of Chirac's games. Chirac might go out of his way to foot-trip Sarko.

So momentum is a net positive for Ségo.

There are doubts about Ségo: She can't point to much of substance that says 'vote for me'. She can only point to a mood she has captured. Don't doubt the value of mood. The risk is that pressure forces her into specifics that are so far unknown or that a hidden agenda gets exposed. Then the camapign gets derailed.

Sarko has a record behind him. He looks a less risky choice. Voters are risk averse.

Ségo got whupped in the candidate debates. She will go into the finals with low expectations, which is good for her, but to me she looks accident prone in the campaign.

The campaign skills thing then favours Sarko. By miles.

Then there is the excitement generated by Ségo being the first woman with a shot at the top. I have met a few woman who are motivated behind her because of this. It makes her look like change - the sort of change the electorate can swallow, cos no one gets hurt. I have also seen hints of her being resented for being a woman - both among woman and men. Is France a more sexist society than anywhere else? I doubt it.

So I think the gender factor is a big plus for Ségo. It gives her automatic support among a section of the electorate. It gives her sympathetic magazines stories - the ones that appear over and over in women's magazines asking 'is she like us?' and 'is it important she's a woman?' Well of course the readers will define that as an issue and say, 'yes I approve'. They will see the soft shots of her and think 'yes, she looks attractive'. So that's pretty good for her and Sarkozy can't get any of it.

Finally, the polls are roughly even but give a slight edge to Sarko. Ségo will get a bump from the nomination.

Looking back over this, it reads as if the campaign that looks best right now is Ségo's. But I would still install Sarko as the favourite. For now.

* Of the last 100 visitors to this website, 22 have landed here from a search engine. Eleven were hunting for some variation on 'Ségolene royal nude'.

This is the cover of the most recent (European edition) Economist:



Ho ho ho. How they must have sniggered when they put that together.

So, to summarise, according to the Economist:

France needs to be more like Britain;

It also needs a decade-long recession;

France's manufacturing sector - the most productive, highest value in the world - needs to be destroyed;

It would be handy to have a small war far away;

France needs to be tossed out of the Euro because its chancellor is incapable of keeping its revenue within shouting distance of its spending;

It needs more riots and hooliganism in its poorest suburbs; and

It needs to double unemployment and poverty as quickly as possible.

Let me see if I can think of reasons why French voters might be wary of the prescription.

(By the way, whatever happened to Mrs Thatcher? Was she the one who was tossed out by her own party, causing a ruption that inflicted fifteen years of division within the Tories? Or would that be another Mrs T?)

A cute New York Times piece about the joys of buying real estate in our corner of Paris, the 17th.

A cafe owner says:

"The French are becoming lazy people who don't want to work. But they shouldn't decide for those who are eager to earn their bread and sweat for it."

It's a bit mystifying that workers can't negotiate to work a longer day in exchange for more holidays. A 39-hour week seems to come up short of brutally oppressive working conditions. You know, just a little short.

Someone in the linked article claims cafes everywhere will be complianing to voters about this law...but it's hard to believe in every cafe les garcons will be telling their customers they want to work longer.

When Adam Gopnik (The New Yorker, Paris To The Moon) wrote about the 35-hour week, he said France decided to fix its economic problems by deciding "everyone needed to work less."

Last year I carefully studied all the figures I could get hold of on the 35-hour week. They showed GDP and employment figures going all over the place - no meaningful linkage was available in any direction. One reason - a shorter working week means places that want to stay open have to employ more staff; and it means people use their leisure time not only to sleep, but to shop and to sit in cafes and bars. It forces an increase in productivity. The idea that we work to live, and not the other way round, is part of French culture; the same culture invests in beautiful public facilities and grand public art, it revels in food and wine. You can't have one without the other.

"Around a dozen Japanese tourists a year need psychological treatment after visiting Paris as the reality of unfriendly locals and scruffy streets clashes with their expectations, a newspaper reported."

Noting the single source and the ubiquitous reproduction of the story, does anyone think someone was pulling the reporter's leg?

Slaphead Jack's personal collection of wine from his excesses as mayor of Paris has been flogged for a million Euros.

There is an old 'cave' - a wine cellar - round the corner from us where I popped in on the weekend. The proprietor had bottles of Armagnac from the fifties, forties and from 1934 on the shelf for sale. All house label. I asked him if the 1934 is still drinkable. He assured me it was a very good drop. Only €400 Euro. It's been in the cellar in this wine shop on the rue de Courcelle since 1934.

The burnt out carcass of a hatchback has been sitting at the end of our street for a few weeks. Not sure what happened to it, but it's not impossible it was the closest example we've had of the car burnings. The headlines have gone, but apparently an average of 112 cars a day have been torched this year. Clichy is only a few miles from where we live, though it might as well be Belgium it for the practical distance. When we've driven through it has felt the same as any other quarter of the banlieu.

An idiot at the fringe lunatic wing of a minor police unit has convinced the Telegraph that the car burnings are an intifada. A competent reporter might have recorded reasons for scepticism, thought here's no evidence that either the Telegraph's sub-sentient cretin nor the foaming police union spokesperson know what an 'intifada' is.

How smug of the English press. We could equally ask how many knifings there are daily in London and conclude there is an undeclared insurgency.

For all that, there isn't anyone in France with much idea how to put out the flames. If you create ghettos, this is what happens. Ghettos take generations to disappear.

The Telegraph claims 2500 cops have been injured this year in the Paris banlieu.

Can't see that figure verified elsewhere. But it does highlight the steady level of background violence going on out there. The car burning riots of last year are by no means over.

On Saturday for Maria's birthday we went out to Parc Asterix. It's like an Asterix themed, slightly dowdy version of Disneyland. It took us two and a half hours of travelling to get there, so unless you were driving out in your own car I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. But it was fun.

Josie went on the most insane roller coaster I've ever seen. Upside down through the loop-de-loops and corkscrews seven times.

Best ride was the last one: the log flume. I got soaked. Maria thinks those things are what boats are really like.

On Sunday I took the kids to Canal St Martin and we walked alongside the pleasant canal for a kilometre or so until we found a huge expanse of green grass with no 'pelouse interdict' sign banning us from running on it. The kids took off their shoes and wrestled and jumped over each other on the unfamiliar lawn.

On Monday night we reached a kind of solstice, a seasonal waypoint, a marker in the meandering turn of the Earth's humdrum progression round the sun.

Sometime after midnight - between about 2AM and 4AM Paris time, to be less vague, the temperature dropped below 14 degrees in the French capital; and 14 degrees celsius at the time was the exact temperature in Wellington. Albeit in the middle of the day.

This is the first time since Spring, according to my cunning and omniscient weather software, that the temperature in Wellington has been higher than in Paris. Even for a nano-second.

Sometime in the next month, maybe after we end daylight saving and return to daylight wasting, we will mark the day when freezing, bitterly cold and unwelcoming Wellington reaches a higher maximum daily temperature than Paris on the same calendar date.

And then it will be time to go home.

There are a few meals that stick forever in your memory, no? We've been lucky enough to enjoy two in the last ten days.

This is where we went for dinner on my birthday.


Possibly the most stunning atmosphere I've ever dined in. The restaurant is in a train station, Gare de Lyon. It truly drips baroque elegance from every inch. We had a drink in the old gentlemen's club-style bar, sitting in old red leather winged-back armchairs sipping kir royal then dined underneath the glittering chandeliers and old frescoes. I had a delicious fois gras 'pour commencer'. The main, foie de veau, was so-so. We asked the waiter for a wine recommendation. With a twinkle in his eye he recommended the '77 chateaux margeaux. "Yes, let's have that," Josie said but I had already seen it's €1200 price tag and demurred as the waiter knew I would. We settled on a 2002 Chateaux L'Hermitage, which he felt was a poor match and to tell the truth it was maybe worth a fraction of its €88 price. Doesn't pay to convert currencies.

Last week we went to Flora's. The atmosphere was nowhere near as unique, although the eight of us had a private room and very personal service (possibly because one of our number was related to Flora). But the food was unrivalled. The best we've had in France, easily. Nine courses. Tiny samples of delicacies. The partridge was memorable for being unique. The best dish, easily, was a fois gras borscht - a pate swimming in a soup, which sounded unpromising but was transportingly delicious.

This review says Flora is regarded as on of the most talented chefs in France. (The article, curiously, qualifies the description 'one of the most talented female chefs'.) I can see how she's earned the respect. Her creations were French provincial inspired, which we've come to expect to be staid and dated. But these dishes were innovative, tantalising and unforgettably, droolingly good.

I would just say anyone coming to Paris should reserve a dinner there. Prepare to be impressed.

Today, for Carlo's birthday, it's off to MacDonalds. Sigh. Variety, you see.

Conventional wisdom is that the French loathe the US, and M. Bush in particular.

So evil weasily Nicolas Sarkozy headed over there and organised himself a photo op shaking the simian's hand at the Whitehouse.

Cue apoplexy in the French establishment.

"With Tony Blair, we have already had one European leader serving the interests of the Americans in Europe. We don't need a second one with Sarkozy."

So said President Chirac. One might riposte with George Bush we already have one dim-witted, arrogant President of a major state and with M. Chirac we don't need another one, but let's plunge on. Ségolène Royal, the socialist front runner to contest the election against Sarkozy was perhaps slyly introducing a bit of Clinton bashing:

"My diplomatic position will not consist of going and kneeling down in front of George Bush."

Dear oh dear.

Trouble is, Sarkozy's ratings went up. The establishment still feels - and fuels - resentment at the US pre-eminence in global affairs, a position that France's scholared elite think belongs to them. There is also standard lefty knee-jerk reaction to the US, probably more important here than in most cultured Western democracies because the knee-jerk left is bigger.

But Sarkozy has correctly guaged how far out of tune this is with the culture of the majority. Far from being anti-American, France has a streak of pro-Americanism dating back to their twin eighteenth century republican revolutions. France sent military help to the US to ensure its victory over the Brits (on exactly the same reasoning still resonating in its foreign affairs outlook - a rational mix of national self-interest and principled ideology.) But ideology is not the cultural changling. America is simply hip - the kids love Macdonalds and American clothing. And there is institutional flattery in French efforts to emulate US industrial hegemony - Airbus, attempts to create a new, French Google, even the entire European project pay a huge compliment to the US.

The Times says there is some murmured question whether France should have opposed the Iraq invasion as strongly.

Le Monde, voice of the leftish establishment, and a Radio France commentator, wondered whether France might be reaching the end of a 45-year cycle in which it has defined itself through its opposition to the United States. 

I think that's wishful thinking by the Times correspondent. You don't lose marks at the Times for bashing France and I haven't noticed a lot of French saying the decision to invade Iraq was right. Nor am I sure Le Monde speaks for that many these days. More likely, French establishment thinking, hammered by the EU constitution debacle, Le Pen, riots and more, is beginning to pay more attention to the values of the public.

It will be a revolution in Paris - but there are plans to make all public places in Paris, including bars and cafes (gasp) smoke free.

At the same time, the number of dog dogs has dropped and renewed efforts are being made to clean up the pavements.

Paris won't be (or smell) the same.

(Ironically, one reason for Macdonald's popularity among young French is that it is one of the few firmly smoke-free venues where they can hang out. I can think of a few anti-Macdonalds bigots who might be shocked about that, with all its many challenges to middle class smugness).

I meant to mention this in the schools post below.

The French school system has re-named Maria.

Her full name is Eva Maria, though we have always called her Maria.

When we went to the town hall to enrol her they insisted she had to be Eva because that is what her documents say comes first.

We thought we would be able to correct this at school. Not so, although - in a special concession, demonstrating the humanity and flexibility of French bureaucracy - they usually call her EvaMaria.

She just thinks she has a home name and a school name.

This site continues to receive almost daily hits from people searching for pictures of Ségolène Royal. Err, nude.

She is almost unstoppable as the socialist candidate for President. According to Wikipedia (the nutshell summaries are mine):

A poll taken on August 29 and 30 shows that 47% of respondents prefer her as the Socialist Party candidate. Although this marks a slight decline from polls a week earlier she maintains a strong lead over all other candidates. Her closest competitor, Lionel Jospin (loser, incompetent, dreary) receives 21%, Dominique Straus-Kahn 16% (wide boy, economics professor, best of the rest), Jack Lang 12% (lunatic former culture minister, weirdo), Laurent Fabius 9% (Rainbow Warrior bomber, cynical untrustworthy looks like he has closet sexual confusion) and François Hollande 8% (dull, like hospital paint is dull. Politically flabby. Party leader).

Sarkozy has wrapped up the centre right. The Sego-Sarko scrap is underway.

And I hadn't expected to say this - but they are both looking talented and appealing about now.

Some facts I didn't know about Mme Royal:

She was born in Senegal.

Her first name is Marie (how did she get away with dropping that in the French school system?)

She was a judge before she entered politics.

Some I did know:

She went to the school you have to go to if you want to be anyone in the French bureaucracy.

Her partner is dreary fat boy Francois Hollande, who happens to be the leader of the socialist party. They are not married, though they have formalised a civil union.

Over summer she was photographed in a fetching bikini. Hollande is a rival for the Presidency nomination (bet those are interesting chit chats...'hey honey, what do you think about booking our holidays for November. You fly out first and I'll come down later with the kids). He was photographed reading 'French history for dummies'. This is when you fire your press secretary.

It's really hot.



Even at midnight it's hot.

We'll be home next week for a few days. Auckland looks cooler.

The enigma of Nikolas Sarkozy seems to deepen every week. He has retaken the opinion poll lead and he is publishing a book - a manifesto really -- to fuel his campaign to succeed the fatuous degenerate Jaques Chirac as President of the Republic.

You can see Sarkozy's political gifts at work here. He says wants to attend to

an economic culture that penalises work; the failed integration of African and Arab immigrants; and a dysfunctional system of government.

All real problems, issues that desperately need to be dealt with and issues where the political establishment has failed badly.

In the last 20 years, he writes, France has plunged from sixth to 17th place in the country rankings of GDP per inhabitant; social expenditure has shot from 20 to 33 percent of output; unemployment is stuck at near 10 percent; and more than half of workers earn less than EUR 1,500 (1,885 dollars) a month.

He will be strongly attacked for saying this, which will suit him because his criticism is true and everyone knows it is. But he glosses lightly over the solutions, almost all of which he either cowers from or, as articulated by him (but probably never to be practiced), would make most of the problems demonstrably worse.

It's a stunning political inversion though to see him described as a right-winger because he believes in affirmative action:

he again praises the US system of "affirmative action" - which he says has allowed millions of black and Hispanic Americans to enter the middle-class. "Positive discrimination is an experience that could inspire us," Sarkozy writes.

In France, the left champions 'equality'. The principle is deeply embedded in the political culture - and in France it means in practice that you treat everyone the same. So, for example, you teach all 10 year olds in France the same maths class at 10AM Monday regardless of their ability because it is unfair and unequal to treat some kids differently to others (okay they don't still quite do that, but it's close enough). The left position in France is actually the Don Brash position in New Zealand. It sits impossibly alongside diversity.

Sarkozy however is a hypocrite. "I abhor racism. I detest xenophobia. I believe in the strength and richness of diversity. I love the idea of a France of many faces," he says. Yes, he loves the many faces so much he banned headscarves in schools to get a better looks at them.

Yup it's been hot this week.

So hot that it felt like a small relief today when the temperature topped out at 30. The evening peak at 37°C was brutal and with temperatures not going below 25°C before midnight the kids have trouble getting to sleep.



The best anti-heat device ever: the Evian spray can. A fine mist of pure water directly on your face, it's sensuous as well as cooling. (And it probably has a built in manufacturer's resale programme with all the hydro-carbon aerosol pumps into the atmosphere.)

We're sucking up Evian like it was umm tap water. The kids take 'swimming pool baths' in cool water a couple of times a day. The wind rattles through the apartment because we've flung open every window to cool down. It's tough to get work done because the heat saps our energy. At creche Carlo runs around with his shirt off and kids have their heads doused in cold water regularly.

Those with apartments that don't cool are suffering. In many it soars over 40 every day. People faint in the streets. Possibly that's only when they see my pale white legs emerge from hibernation.

All day we have been singing Allez Les Blue and Zizou Y Va Marquez.

It will be thrilling if France win.

But in the end, blood counts.

Paris is going off.

The tooting and shouting started with Patrick Vierra's second goal and exploded when Zinedene Zidane hammered home number three, so cool, so complete, in extra time. (His Wikipedia entry was amended to include that goal within an hour).

Allez Les Bleus.

What a game. Everyone wrote off France after the dull first round, coming as it did after the train wreck of the 2002 title defence. Deep down I think most of us thought France was going out tonight. Didn't stop me putting £500,000 of unreal BBC world cup daq cash on a France win though, to double my money.

At around 9 tonight Paris went quiet. The night turned drab when Spain shot ahead on that penalty. And then ugly Frank equalized and the roars truly seemed to shake the stone apartment buildings all over town.

France looked good tonight, their passing sparkled, they were creative up front and flooded the defence. Notice too how elegant the game is when sides try to prevail on flair and skill instead of hacking the legs out from under their opponents.

The streets erupted with that second goal. The horns on buses over the road drowned out the roars after a while.

There was a tense couple of minutes as the French commentators went hysterical, unable to say much more than the time left on the clock and the Spanish charged at our goal again and again.

Then Zizou scored.

We flung open our windows. Neighbours up and down six floors all down our street on both sides flung open theirs. We put on an outrageous Edith Piaff version of La Marseillaise and blasted it out to the street. Revellers rushed onto the road. The Eiffel Tower lit up and I'm sure another searchlight beam was switched on. Someone seemed to press a fast forward button and spun the searchlight faster.

In less elegant capitals they take to the streets and fire their guns in the air. How fortunate madness in Paris only makes fans climb in their cars and drive around honking. And we live in a quieter neighbourhood. I saw a Vespa speed by with three people on board, revving like crazy and the horn on permanent blow. Firecrackers went off, teenagers sang 'allez Les Bleus'. Those tinny little French commuter cars with sunrooves slightly larger than the roof sped past honking with groups of cheering lunatics standing in the roof window waving their shirts - possibly because there hasn't been much football flag-waving yet.

And this is only for making the last eight.

Patriotically listen to La Marseillaise here.

Yesterday was the day of the Fête de la Musique, with music events all over Paris.

It's been held on the 21st of June every year since 1981.

The principle is that anyone can play music around the city without a permit.

That's right! Without a permit.

An excellent post on the joys of completing French bureaucratic procedures to get a driver's licence.

It includes:

Study and learn the Code de la Route. This is the huge and diabolically difficult body of knowledge everyone in France has to master before getting a driver's license. It includes things like a sign with a bicycle facing left versus a sign with a bicycle facing right, and the dates of opening of mountain passes.

We drove to Fontainbleau on Sunday.



Nice stair case.

We ate lunch at Berbizon. The whole 'paint the countryside instead of just religious artifacts' thing got going there, with Rosseau and his buddies staying there and painting the soft luscious French fields and its forests.


Naturally the town is full of little galleries now, shovelling landscapes out the door. They were crammed with people and some of the dullest painting I've ever seen.

On the other hand, I dined on a perfect steak. Steak that good - hell I would paint the cow.

At nine minutes past nine, nine minutes after the start of France's second World Cup game last night Thiery Henry slammed a cross into the net and registered France's first world cup goal since they won in 1998.

If we hadn't been watching on tv, we would have felt it. It seemed Paris exploded. We had the doors open to the street to let in the summer night and the stone buildings rocked from the roar.

It sounded like the noise you hear a mile from a football stadium: Thousands of happy people shouting at once. Right down the street, around the block, in rue after rue, there was a release.

There hasn't been much football nationalism on display. Flags have been rare, football shirts are so unusual I saw them discounted in a shop. But the fandom is there and it came out in the night. It positively shook the city.

For the rest of the game the cries of despair and frustration, the oohs and ahs, floated down the street and bumped the stone about.

You could hear the fury when South Korea scored. No one thinks France is going far in this tournament. But hope springs.

France, 1 Corée du Sud, 1.

This afternoon.



UPDATE 0-0

Oh well.

It was passionate and exciting. It was 35 degrees outside according to the temperature outside the chemist over the road. The city was rolling in the soft heat. It felt like Singapore without the scent of rotting vegetation. I went to a scruffy bar because it reminded me of watching rugby at Lovelocks' Bar in Wellington. It wasn't packed at the start. The fans sitting round were drinking wine. And then it filled up as people finished work and packed the bar, beer-drinkers arrived, the noise levels rose and rose. French sports fans enjoy their sports as entertainment. It's not serious and gritty, but robust and energetic.

The French football team plays as if it were playing chess. There are complex moves taking the ball up through the midfield but then they try the same complexity in front of goal when brutality is called for and it all goes soft. They haven't scored a goal since they won the World Cup in 1998. They don't look like scoring one. They could have lost this game 2-0; The Swiss were spectacularly unlucky on a couple of shots, but it would have been an injustice all the same.

Brazil had obvious flair, their touches look light and creative. But they also look as if they are a team of superstars trying to show off their tricks. They seldom look like a team building together towards a goal. But they were playing Croatia who were pretty strong.

So far, Brazil and Germany have looked the most convincing sides to my highly inexpert eye.

I mentioned a while back that this site featured on the front page of msn search for the (misspelt) 'Ségolène Royale'.

Now it turns out a bit worse.

My blog stats showed a few visits coming in from Yahoo. Turns out this site is currently - at time of writing - the number one Yahoo search result for anyone searching for 'Ségolène Royal nude'. Spell it right - 'Royal', without the extraneous 'e' - and we're down a bit in tenth. Still on the front page.

Why anyone is searching for that - well the world wide web is a big place. Ewww.

Meanwhile, La Royal is beginning to take strong policy positions. Last week she came out and asked whether the 35-hour week is damaging chances for the unemployed. She has called for the parents of delinquents to be sent to parenting school (where do I sign up?). She even questioned gay marriage. Like the weasel on amphetamines, Nikolas Sarkozy, she is appealing to the public outside her own party's comfort zone.

The Socialist Party has saddled her with a platform that would make her unelectable. (It wants to tax companies differently according to whether they distribute profits as dividends or reinvest them. The French socialist party is possibly the nuttiest social democrat party in Europe. It's always a sign of nuttiness when you point out to someone their policies will ensure they can't win, and they respond that it doesn't matter, the important thing is to be 'right'). But if Royal has the nomination in November she will ditch that rubbish by early 2007, in time for a smooth run to the Presidential run-offs.

The prospect of a Sego-Sarko election looks high - and it will be a great battle.

It's exam season for high school seasons. You can kinda tell by looking at the high school students because there is a universal exam-season look on the dials of kids, no? And a universal study-avoidance way of behaving.

According to this excellent blog, the first exam is philosophy. Essays might be about:

"Can one judge the value of a culture objectively?"

"What is happiness?"

"Is there any sense in trying to escape from Time?"

From the link, I also like:

"Why do we want to be free?"

"Can one be slave of a technical object?"

And I think should all have a view on these subjects. Otherwise, ummmm, 'what is the point of knowledge'?

Oh...the answers:

a) No.

b) Sauvignon blanc, cricket, maybe a boat.

c) Yes. But only if Newsweek will give you the cover.

d) So we are affordable to cheap spouses.

e) I'll answer this as soon as I get off the phone.

It truly truly is World Cup fever.

The temperature raced up over thirty degrees this afternoon. And in the heat every now and then a tooting car passes the window waving an indecipherable flag. I have pieced together evidence and worked out what's going on. Yesterday Ecuador (go on, bet you cannot name a single colour in its flag) beat Poland. Then today Trinidad & Tobago pulled off a draw with Sweden. No, see, you didn't know theirs either. Both events caused fans to celebrate - as if either will reach even the third round.

The opening ceremony yesterday was laughably bad. Think of every German cliche from the 70s, right down to the Eurovision song belted out by Steven Seagal's German identisch.

Then Germany power-smacked a not-bad Costa Rica. They shot again and again from outside the penalty box. Fantastic shots. The first goal...the left wing went round his man and shot past the keeper from 25 metres to go in off the post in the top right hand corner. Perfection. The last goal might have been better - 30 metres, maybe, in front, power hit through the defenders, curling away again right into the top right corner leaving the goalie with no chance.

I would never watch a Germany-Costa Rica game were it not for this orgy of sports. But, wow the World Cup is really something.

** Apparently, 'soccer' is a word invented by rugby playing toffs, coined from 'Association' and meant as a put down. In future, it's 'football' for me.

***The ABs were depressingly bad this morning. I watched at the James Joyce bar, with Irishmen who were happy for an hour. They almost had me willing an Irish win by half-time. Kelleher, Nonu, Rawlinson and maybe Mealamu shouldn't play for the All Blacks again unless they lift their game enormously. So'oialo and Jack should not be having off nights like that. The line-outs, still rubbish. How can this be? It was a B-Team backline, of course.

The sun is setting in Paris just before ten, which means it's still light at 10.30.

Outside the cafes on the footpaths all over the city, Parisians are sitting in the cool lavender light, sipping drinks, arguing, flirting, watching.

Parisians dress so well, once you notice it you can't stop looking. There is no polar fleece. None. Anyone who doesn't look smart is almost certainly an outsider. Even the t-shirts have a designer touch and seem to be seen on male models alone.

This year navy and white preppy summer looks are back in the shops for men. (At least in my favourite shops - Celio, for example, for bottom end. Poids et measures for top end). It is a colour a scheme I like and would suit me, except the fashion's twist this year is tennis jerseys cut very trim around the waist. You have to be nineteen and anorexic, like I was at 19. Imagine a white blazer with very light blue pin stripe, a blue polo and a pink cashmere jumper tied round the neck. Or blue knee-length naval shorts with a white pinstripe and a white v-neck (with a blue line around the collar). White, blue, pink with gentle brown or yellow trim. It's a classic faux-naval summer sports look. It's the exact opposite (of course) of the ugly military grunge punk'd garbage look of the last couple of summers - and much more flattering.

The summer sales start in just a couple of weeks.

The Economist reports, "one of France's most prestigious high schools has announced a programme to help disadvantaged students." It will provide thirty poor kids with a private tutor, free housing, a laptop computer and tickets to cultural events, all without tuition fees. [That link may be behind a subscription wall].

The idea is that this special attention will get the kids into the elite grandes écoles. If you want to be anything in France you more or less have to go to one of those schools, see.

What a typically hopeless solution: Instead of getting rid of a corrupt and inefficient system that limits avenues to achievement to those lucky enough to go to the right school, they let a very tiny number into the right schools. This doesn't only penalise the poor kids who miss out on opportunities, though they pay the most obvious price. It also means wider French society is denied the fruits of those kids who would make it but don't - the entire society misses out on the lost contribution of those kids' potential. Bigotry comes at a terrible price, and it's paid even by those who defend the system to secure their own relative advantage.

I wish I could say this was only a French problem.

On Friday afternoon I went with a friend to Saveurs, a gourmet food expo, where tiny independent producers show off their stuff in a converted underground car park in our Porte de Champerret neighbourhood.

It takes a while to get past the stands vending aged cheeses, exotic salami, fois gras, wine, spices, breads, sweets, preserves.

The scent of the place makes you stand still and just breathe.

We got merry sampling wine from small ancient producers. I bought a case of light and breezy champagne and a very expensive bottle of sizzling buttery armagnac. Then there was a mixed case from a part of bordeaux claiming to be the best white wine in the world.

The top end whites are not as sensational on the tongue as a New World wine, but the after-taste lingers and seduces dreamily like no wine I have ever been able to afford before. I asked about the wines as if I knew anything and a saleswoman, pouring me a glass of Château Margaux, sternly wagged her finger at me: "No. We do not like it when you talk about the grape. We only talk about the soil!". Anyone can sell the grape; only they can sell the soil. (Margaux is one of the 'first growth' old chateaux of Bordeaux, like Lafite-Rothschild, by the way. Just, you know, to let you know how I spend my Fridays).

I bought a huge piece of old Beaufort cheese. It's like a dryer, more complex gruyere-parmsean cross, tasting like pineapple.

And there was an exquisite bottle of Morrocan massage oil.

French olive oils are more specialised than Spanish, Italian and Greek. The common flavour is a bit too young, fresh and nutty for me, and I tried enough to get a good feel for the range. I found a very small outlet with a nutty, darkly flavoured, not so green oil that just begs to have fresh baguette dipped in it.

On Saturday Josie and I went back. We must have spent half an hour at the spice place. Quite expensive - about €5 for a tiny 25gm packet of fresh pepper. But oh that pepper. Add some of that, some fresh sea salt and fresh nutty olive oil to an A-grade spaghetti and you have possibly the most delicious flavour combination ever invented and that's including dishes with bacon. This is what was meant when salt and pepper were pioneered. That stale, tasteless pepper we are used to is as different to real pepper as a baguette to a piece of cardboard. The spice girls also sent us packing with varieties of tea I've never dreamt of...chocolate, something with blue flowers smelling like heaven, none of it 'flavoured' tea leaves but proper tea made from wild tea leaves.

There were lunch tables serving oysters and cognac. There was a cheese place that set out dozens of small wooden boxes, each holding a few dozen neatly stacked pieces of the oldest, crustiest, mouldiest cheese, rows and rows of and rows of variety, all hand made and stacked into a rustic visual feast.

New Zealand farmers compete to make the heaviest lambs for the cheapest price. French farmers compete to make the tastiest. I sampled a morsel of lamb with the texture of frois gras.

There were pestos so heavy on garlic they tasted like snails. There were salamis made with fennel, and salamis made without fat so they tasted like meaty, smokier pieces of parma ham.

We brought home biscotti rich with multiple sweet flavours and delicate spices.

The midget thyme and sage plants in the entrance hallway were pungent enough to scent the whole flat in an hour.

Your taste buds come alive in these places, the juices flow.

Any male swimming in the municipal pool must wear speedos. Not board shots. Speedos.

There is actually a dude who patrols the pool enforcing this rule and ejecting non-compliers.

Honestly, you can't make this up.



Yeah, that's me. It was cold.

On Friday visitors Trish and John from NZ took us to dinner. They're regular Paris hands with a few contacts here, so they rang around to get advice on the most highly recommended brasserie to take us to. It was to be a surprise.

It turned out to be Brasserie Balzar. They were slightly disappointed we had already been there. It's famous. A review in the Guardian the other day said it was modern in that it has a website where you can book online and traditional in that when you arrive they have no record of the booking.

Adam Gopnick wrote about it in Paris To The Moon. He described it as the most definitive, best brasserie in the world and described a very French confrontation when a new owner bought it. Customers plotted with waiters to organise a protest.

It isn't the best brasserie in the world, though it may be the most perfectly typical. The menu is onion soup, steak tartare, duck, steak bernaise, chicken and chips, profiteroles, crème brûlée and every other cliché of Paris brasserie dining. The décor is wicker chairs, mirrors and dark wood with pretty chandaliers, the waiters (les garçons) wear black aprons over white shirts, the tables aren't big enough...It was all a bit ordinary and I think Trish and John were a bit disappointed.

On Sunday we set out again, this time to find some funky bars. I did something I haven't done before - I researched some options. So for once instead of aimlessly wandering around the Marais and ending up somewhere sad, we discovered three of the best bars I've been to in Paris.

Art Brut at 78, rue Quincampoix (3eme arrondissment) is described as "Déco à la "Têtes Raides". Whatever that means. It is funky, small, just the right noise and feel. Very cheap.

A bit further down the same rue, Le Troisième Lieu at 62, rue Quincampoix (4e) looked promising. When we got there a sign said tonight they were having electronic headphone karaoke so we didn't go in.

Instead we headed down the Marais, going completely the wrong way for a while because I misread the address, but eventually found ourselves at a place described by some - including the Economist magazine (and economists know stuff mang) -- as 'one of the best bars in the world': The Lizard Lounge 18, rue du Bourg-Tibourg (4e). The crowd was spilling out the door so we didn't go in. Looks funky though. 'Stead we went a few doors down to La Coude Fou, 'the crazy elbow'. It was outstanding. Brilliant decoration - big murals, Frenchy light fittings, not too smart, cool noisy, good menu. And reasonable. I think it cost about €100 for the four of us to eat and drink a couple of bottles of very good Bordeaux. The waiters don't dress in those French waiter uniforms. Just good atmos, and fun to be in. One of those memorable dinners you don't forget.

Now I have researched I have so many more bars to see. We may never leave.

Today we went on a long bendy bus, stuffed to overflowing and smelly on the first truly sweltering summery Saturday of the year.

We went on the 'PC' route up to Clignancourt in the north of the city to the biggest flea market in Paris.

It's a collection of markets. Around the perimeter there are clothing stalls and trinkets where immigrants vend dodgy gear and know the customers enough to speak to passers-by in English. I bought a silver bling bracelet to replace the expensive beautiful one Josie gave me that was stolen from my suitcase on the flight home in January. Josie bargained the stall-holder down to half price through the simple device of threatening to walk away.

Inside there are established buildings selling 'antiques' - the French plates and sketches to furniture outlets selling exquisite commodes, chandeliers and vases worth €10,000. I have seen a €6,000 candlestick. Gold paint, about 18 inches high, maybe holds six candles. Bling. There were exquisite eighteenth century clocks straight out of Versailles. There was a Napoleon table, with a picture of the Emperor and all his generals depicted in smaller ovals around the outside. There were beautiful French chairs and marble top bedside tables. All massively, preposterously, outrageously expensive. But who pays label?

There is a post over here on one of the Paris blogs about the Musée Picasso.

It was my favourite Paris museum from the first time I saw it and everyone who goes there seems to come away thinking the same.

The big galleries, the Orsay and the Louvre, are just collections of stuff. You need to know about the stuff to see why it matters. The Picasso museum gives a context, you understand the breadth of his work, see the brilliance and that it wasn't all just about odd shapes and understand what he was doing.



It's a dead collection though. It's not as if it will get any bigger.

It's a search engine quirk, but this very small site comes up on the front page of MSN search results if you search for 'Ségolène Royale' (misspelt with the extraneous 'e' as I did in a post here the other day).



I've had a few visits from people searching for info about her (and now I'll have some more - hi). She is a political phenomenon. In the last month she seems to have been on almost every magazine billboard. Now she has surged to the front of polls as the preferred choice for the next President of the Republic.

When you visit her site - it translates as the excruciating and empty 'future desires' - her policy and values are so much beige. She really stands for nothing, except being a fresh face in a sea of beige men. Then again, so does everyone else: Sarkozy, the Minister for the Interior, is a hyperactive, pro-American free marketeer one day and a France-first, consensus-seeking softer-than-Villepin moderate the next. Royal is at least unblemished and uncompromised by years of govenrment.

There is a long way to go. But imagine what could happen here. Hillary in the White House, Ségolène in the Elysées Palace. Crikey.

So what will driver her to the presidency? The issues in France are often represented as a clash between the need to change and the the difficulty of change. But this article is an excellent and intelligent discussion of the myths.

The French economy isn’t actually in trouble. Growth, although not great, is ticking along, inflation is controlled, unemployment is higher than the UK but lower than Italy or Germany, and the demographics ... look a lot better than many other countries.

The central argument of this commentary is that France has

a two-speed economy; a core of high productivity, highly globalised but also highly labour-protected industries that you really don’t want to compete with (think Alcatel-Lucent, nuclear power, high-speed trains and AXA), and a crappy small business sector that tends to combine poor social protection with worse productivity

I think the analysis is pretty much on the money, even if it's cavalier about the level of unemployment. In some areas it is horrendous and it ignores the obvious objection that many young people stay in higher education because it's so damn hard to get a job.

But there is a good case to be made that the French model is working well.

The protests have worked and Chirac has dumped the CPE.

He is promising to replace it with the usual pile of fluff and bluster that will change nothing.

Dominique de Villepin, I would be thinking, will never make the Elysees palace.

Josie's brother Reuben and his partner Maggie are over from Oxford. Yesterday we went up the Eiffel Tower.

Pics of and from the tower are here.

Andrew Hilditch is the new Australian cricket selector. He used to be Richard Hadlee's bunny. The 'Caps called him the 'Happy Hooker'. Hadlee would put a fielder out at backward square leg and then drop one in short, Hilditch would swot it, the catch would be taken and Australia 8-1. Those were the days.

Kathryn Ryan is taking over nine-to-noon. Well done, good for her.

In my package of books from Amazon today: Getting Things Done by David Allen. (Hint: Don't waste time blogging).

Also, one on the collapse of Yugoslavia in the nineties, a topic I've been voraciously reading up on because I feel guilty for not paying enough attention at the time. And if you want to know everything about Europe, it's all there.

Segolene Royale is emerging very strongly as the left candidate to oppose Nicholas Sarkozy in next year's presidential election.

She seems to be everywhere. Consequently her poll ratings are on a vertical growth path.

One searches in vain for evidence of her actual, you know...policies. She has mastered the emphatic evasion for now. She will have to say what she wants to do one day and her ratings will return to earth then. Always goes the same way with the Next Big Thing.

She has the advantage of having gone to the school you have to attend if you want to be anything in French politique.

It is not unhelpful to her that her rivals are reported saying:

"Who will look after the children?" (Laurent Fabius)

and

"The presidential race is not a beauty contest." (Jack Lang)

Fabius was the French PM when the Rainbow Warrior was bombed and organised the cover-up. Ran against his own party over the Europe constitution, arguing it was neo-liberal because it allowed poor foreigners to come here and take their jobs. Nasty piece of work with a sense of entitlement. Still, didn't stop others. He won't get the nomination from the socialist party, but he will probably run anyway.

Lang is a charming former culture minister who would have been a spectacular candidate in, oh I don't know, 1973?

The other potential candidate is Francois Hollande. He is Segolene Royale's partner, which is all very Bill and Hillary. And just like Bill and Hillary, Francois and Segolene aren't actually married. Francois is the leader of the Socialist Party. Other than the excruciating Professor Prodi, he is possibly the most boring man in Europe, Swedes included.

Check out this guy, carrying a placard saying:

"Je suis la!."

I am here. Uh huh.

I snapped a few shots as I passed through Trocadero today.

Click on the pic.

A French dude makes a claim on his travel insurance:

There were many forms to fill out in what became known as Dossier 52219220. One form confirmed, reasonably, the cancellation of the trip. Another, again reasonably, was the original bill for the ticket. Another, beginning to shade into the unreasonable, was a letter from his new employer testifying to his hiring. Then he had to supply his salary, his insurance with his employer, his expense account qualifications and his "compulsory payment for fixed-term contract."

If you have ever seen pictures of the May 1968 student riots in Paris, you have seen those large circular iron railings being used by students to make barricades. They were grills which had been placed around the base of trees so the roots could get water and still be protected from pedestrians. The kids dug them up along with cobblestones from the streets, hid behind the railings, and threw the cobblestones at the police.



In St Germain at the moment, the area around the Sorbonne and epi-centre of the protests against the CPE, the railings have all been removed. Most of the cobbled streets were tarsealed long ago, but the absence of the heavy iron-railings caught everyone by surprise. Tourists walking along the footpath suddenly would step into the muddy pit next to the tree.

The consensus is Monsieur Le President Chirac butchered the politics on Friday night in his effort to play all sides on the new jobs law, so the rage will take to the streets again on Tuesday. Another day of all the schools closed, the trains and the Metro shut, demonstrations, riots and rising worries where this is all going.

There is a reason everyone sings about Paris in the Spring. The sun came back with daylight saving a week ago and it's been tolerably warm since. The parks are getting busy again and the evenings linger a little.

Last night Josie and I headed out into the pleasant spring air aiming to meet as many new people as we could, first at the monthly meeting of New Zealanders in France and then at a meet-up of Paris bloggers.

We arrived at Eden Park, the pub in St Germain named after the place where I mis-spent my youth, ordered a drink and looked around for signs of New Zealanders. The first we saw was Zinzan Brooke, though he was only in a large portrait on the wall. Everyone in the bar - everyone - was watching a rugby game on tele. Just like New Zealanders, we thought. Silently watching the footy. But they all seemed French. They spoke French when they were asking us to move out of the way of the tv screens. There wasn't much nzedness in sight. So we left.

Next it was over to the marais where a bunch of Paris bloggers were meant to be getting together. (Hey, we've got a blog! Let's go to that!). It was quiz night. Everyone there was listening to snippets of excruciating French pop songs and guessing the names. Whenever we detected someone speaking English or vaguely fitting the description, we went up to them:

"Excuse me, are you the bloggers?"

"What?"

"The Paris bloggers?"

"Sorry I don't understand." (Weirdest pick-up line I've ever heard mister).

"Paris bloggers. Petite Anglaise. There is a meeting of Paris bloggers - are you with them?"

"No." Go away.

By the end of the night? Not a single person met.

Although Josie bought a lovely new handbag and I got some excellent Italian leather shoes.

Carlo's creche will be closed on Monday because the teachers are going on strike.

It's nothing to do the the CPE. This is an entirely separate grievance. As for the CPE, well Chirac is addressing the nation on tv tonight to tell us what he is going to do. Word on the street, he is going to do something to soothe the angered masses. A delay in implementation while talks are held, maybe? We'll see.

No the creche teachers all over Paris are going out because the Paris city council is opening lots of new creches. You may recall it took us ten months to get Carlo into a creche last year because they were all full with waiting lists. There are complex committee decisions to allocate places with the priority going to white people who speak the language and pay bribes. (I may be mistaken on this. Possibly). Anonymous, totally unaccountable bureaucrats are enjoying the rushing feeling of power as they determine whether or not to allow two year olds to get into childcare.

The council is under pressure to relieve the jam, but it is not hiring sufficient teachers, the existing teachers claim. The council, in a notice published on the door of the creche, insists it has to make sure all teachers are adequately qualified.

I talked to one of the mothers this morning who was frantic about what she will do for childcare on Monday. She said all the parents are worried, especially since the strike is indefinite. It will probably go on to Tuesday and maybe longer. They'll let us know.

So summarising then:

1. There aren't enough creches in Paris because they can't get enough 'qualified staff'.

2. There is ten per cent unemployment in France and only a quarter of graduates have a job a year after they finish university.

3. The students are on strike over the government's efforts to do something about 2.

4. The teachers are on strike over the council's efforts to do something about 1.

5. There are plainly important reasons we don't understand why they can't use some of the people affected by problem 2. to fix some of problem 1.

6. There is no better way to address any of these problems than to go on strike.

The Chrysler PT cruiser is being marketed in France to the child molester demographic.

That's the only plausible interpretation of the new billboards.

I could find only this small reproduction of the billboard on the Chrysler France website.

The US Chrysler site doesn't seem to have the ad at all, so I'm thinking this is a French campaign.

The car is featured prominently with a bra hanging out the window. In the foreground lie some roses, a discarded shoe, tie and lacy underwear. The message is, 'have this car and get more sex'. Fair enough, virtually every billboard in Paris has the same message, suggestively draped in appealing bodies as most of them happen to be. It's a French thing and you would have a coronary if you got offended easily.

Except also in the foreground of this one is jarring further element: A child's teddy bear.

You can't see it in the pic here, and it's discreet on the real thing. But it's there.

And it's creepy - who is it suggesting the owner of the car is having sex with?

It's possibly there to show the car is being marketed to sexy parents. As well as being sexy it's good for getting the kids round in. But then there would be a few blocks and toys thrown around too.

Or perhaps it's saying the teddy is a part of a romantic package of gifts - sexy underwear, red roses, a teddy and a Chrysler. Bit weird, though. You would use something less ambiguous - like another rose or diamonds.

I'm always fascinated by the way companies use billboards. The tactic is usually to stick up a gigantic picture and hope someone who might be interested in the car you're selling just happens to wander by and understand your meta-messages at exactly the time they are making their next car-purchasing decision. So marketers tell themselves they are building brands with the billboards (so how come there is a message about this month's special finance offer on the car?). Anyway, to build the brand, the elements of the billboard need to be focused uncompromisingly on the brand values. What exactly is the brand value of associating teddy bears with sex and Chryslers?

Personally, I would be keeping well away from Chrysler drivers.

I meant to write something about this the other day when it happened.

An ardent defender of the French tongue, Chirac said he had been "deeply shocked" to hear English on the lips of the Frenchman in a speech at the two-day European summit.

"I was deeply shocked that a Frenchman would speak at the council table in English," he told journalists, explaining for the first time his abrupt walkout when the summit opened on Thursday.

"That's the reason why the French delegation and myself left so as not to have to listen to that."

Prat. He's a prat. A walkout was a petulant, flouncing, indulgent way to react.

But he has a point, doesn't he?

English might be the international language of business, but it isn't the international language of the French. If I were French I would want to see the language used as widely as I could. The more French is used, the better it is for France. So there is self interest for the French.

If monolingual ignorami like me want to understand, then that's our problem, no?

* This is running at Scoop.

The Maori guy in the All Blacks beanie confused me. We emerged from the underground right in the middle of Place de Republique and he came straight up to us. I thought he had clocked us as kiwis, so I said, 'kia ora'.

He wasn't Maori, he wasn't a kiwi. He was a plain clothes cop telling me to get myself and the kids out of the way. A moment later as I pressed the kids into a wall a gang of teenage boys jostled past, running, aggro, getting close to a fight. The front of the giant march was charging into the square and there were scuffles and pushing to clear room. There were young men prowling for trouble. If the demo I watched in the wet spring sunshine ten days ago was a Saturday afternoon party, this dark afternoon was a tense confrontation with gatecrashers.

My five year old was off school because it closed for the general strike; my two year old was turned away from creche this morning because not enough teachers showed up to work. Our underground Metro line was running though, so it was easy to travel across Paris to watch the 'the parade' as my five year old called it.

I sped them away from trouble, past streets blocked by lines of riot police standing only just out of the way. They stood glaring behind riot shields and visors, bristling batons and holstered sidearms, guards over their shins, knees, elbows and shoulders like blue Star Wars soldiers. Behind the pack a cop held a cannon for the tear gas and then there were trucks for dragging away prisoners and more trucks for spraying water at crowds.

It would have made a great photo if I could have stopped, but you don't with two small kids clinging on. Behind the police was sanctuary and their protection.

The Place de Republique is beautiful, dominated by a towering goddess, La Republique, reaching out with an olive branch in the street where Louis XVI's head left his shoulders.

Under the darkening sky, we looped around the central square and found a safe pool to drop anchor. Then the near-black sky broke and drenched the march as tens of thousands poured into the plaza like rain water sluicing down a river.

The noise and humour of the early protests was gone. This was angrier, rows of young men surged around the sidelines waiting for the rumble.

I told the kids a 'parade' is called a 'manifestation'. Everyone was angry because the guys who make the rules were making a new rule they didn't like. They were shouting 'resistance', which means 'you can't tell us what to do' but you're not allowed to say it to Dad. I told them there once was a king who made bad rules no one liked and he didn't listen when people told him to stop taking everyone's toys for himself. So you know what they did? They brought him here and they chopped off his head!

Will they do that to these guys? I don't think so baby.

While we were on our way home the riot police moved to clear the square, firing tear gas and their water cannons.

The trouble-makers are a different group, not the students and union-organised workers, but young groups travelling in from the out suburbs. Last week some of them started attacking the students.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion the protestors are demonstrating to keep their own protections, while that protection comes at the expense of others who know they will never share in the future that the students feel is being threatened.

I took some photos of Republique. They're here.

And I made a brief movie of the pix, which you can click in the sidebar (about 3 megs to download - don't bother if you don't have broadband. You might need Quicktime to watch it - free download for osx and windows here).

Maria is home from school. When I took Carlo to creche they turned him away because not enough teachers had been able to get to work.

High schools are closed and hundreds of students in front of their school in Saint Denis have set fire to cars. Saint Denis is pretty much the epi-centre of the riots last year.

The universities are occupied, trains and subway services severely disrupted and the serving staff at the boulangerie around the corner are more than usually surly.

Interesting comment on this Paris blog:

I was discussing, with a Parisienne student today, the nature of the recent violence and crime associated with the protests (the group of people who came in to beat people for their cellphones) and she said it actually made her scared. She felt that a boundary, the unspoken boundary of the Periph, had been crossed. The violence and crime associated with disaffected youth from the suburbs had finally breached the barrier.Which, in turn, made me realise how the protestors are those who will have access to jobs in the higher eschelons, and that their protests are not recognised by young uneducated thugs precisely because they don’t even see this kind of future as possible. Which in turn brings me to the CPE. It was created to help ease employment situations among the discontented and discouraged youth of the suburbs. Is fighting against the CPE then a means for the privileged class to remain privileged?

Yup, pretty much true. This is a demonstration by the inside to keep the outside out.

Without a car to go to the shop, we can either organise livraison - home delivery - or we take a little old lady shopping trundler with us. When Carlo is with me he goes in the backpack or else he comes in the pram and I have to leave the trundler behind. Then even a small shop means balancing shopping bags all over the handles of the pram and shredding my palms carrying them (it would be easier if there weren't so many bottles of wine).

What I'm saying is, when I come home from the shopping I usually look something like this:


More pics of overloaded stuff here. The donkey is laugh out loud funny.

We've been invited to a cocktail party with all residents of our building in one of the upstairs flats. The old lady from the ground level will be there, the one I insulted once when she burst into our place rudely and remonstrated with Maria for spilling a teaspoon of water over the balcony while watering plants. The couple downstairs who bang on the pipes every time Carlo pads across the floor, they'll be there too.

As I struggled out the twenty-inch door of the lift this afternoon with Carlo in a pushchair a vinegary old matron stood unhelpfully in front of us tutting, sighing and tsking at the hold up and inconvenience, with that impatient, contemptuous glare dessicated Parisian women have; as Bill Clinton's mother once said of Barbara Bush, I can't tell y'all the word for 'em, but it rhymes with 'rich'.

She'll be there.

I can tell from brief conversations in the lift and at the door that most speak a little English and not many speak enough to see us through a martini.

Equipped as I am with tiny talk, I will make small talk. I've been studying:

"Oui, nous sommes mariés." Yes, we are married.

"J'aime beaucoup votre moustache." I really like your moustache.

"C'est charmant sur une dame d'un certain age." It's charming on an older woman.

"Est-ce que vous-etiez dans la resistance?" Were you in the Resistance?

"Parlez-vous Allegmagne?"

There is still a sour cold as mean and breath-freezing as the deepest days of winter. Though the sun crept through for a while on the weekend and we even enjoyed double digit temperatures for a few hours, the skies are mostly formless slimy and grey, the air is wet and the ground never dries.

Every time I leave the apartment I look for a green sparkle in the branches. The first green flickers of spring arrived suddenly last year. Over a year ago I wrote:

"It's warm outside, the sun is shining and you can walk around in your shirtsleeves. In fact it's too hot to wear a jacket outside."

Not this year. Winter is later, grimmer, greyer. In fact, looking back over those posts, at the end of March 2005 I said,

"Those nude branches lining the rues and the avenues are flickering with spring. We are in the uncertain weeks between overcoats and suncream, like Island Bay any week of the year. In the parks, busy gardeners dress more stylishly than any casual visitor in suits of gleaming green trimmed with thick silver bands, tuned perfectly with their trucks and their trolleys."

No this year is different. Spring is coiled in its box. But any day the sun will come out and the air will turn warm and the parks and sidewalks will be suddenly gowned*.

It can't come soon enough.


* "gowned": verb, like a garden version of pwned. Also, I don't care, a third of English verbs started life as nouns: Pedalled? Booked? Tabled? Chaired? Sounded? Claimed? Pictured? Calculated?

** "Pwned" Currently my favourite 'word'.

This is up on Scoop.

They say the street always wins in French politics.

Daily for a week the Paris streets have filled with protests organised by students and unions demanding 'retrait du Contrat Première Embauche', or withdrawal of the 'first employment contract' law. The CPE introduces a two-year probationary period for anyone under 26 when employers could fire them for any reason.

Opponents say making it easier to sack people won't create any jobs, that it will increase insecurity for young workers and make them more likely to be exploited.

The government says employers are more likely to hire young workers when they know they can change their minds later. The point is a strong one in France because it is very difficult to dismiss staff for poor performance or even because business conditions demand cutbacks.

The CPE was one of the measures prime minister Dominique de Villepin proposed to reduce youth unemployment following the car burning riots last year. In the months following he became the favourite to replace Jacques Chirac as President in presidential elections next year. Now his popularity is being shredded.Villepin has managed the almost politically impossible - for the first time since Mitterand the socialist party is united, and in tune with the large majority of French public opinion at that. Although it continues to languish in polls its leaders queued at the rallies as if at a beauty contest: The socialist party leader Francois Hollande was there with his wife Segolene Royale - both are front runners to be the left's presidential candidate next year, along with former culture minister Jack Lang who was also there. The ridiculous Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe was there too.

As the three-mile long demonstration walked through Paris' elegant streets marchers chanted in rhythmic beat with drums keeping time, 'Chirac. Villepin. Sar-ko-zy...retrait, retrait, retrait du CPE'. The President, the Prime Minister and the right-wing populist Interior Minister. In the cool afternoon sun demonstrators waved flags and flew balloons. Many students wore plastic bags to show the government regarded them as disposable.

It's obvious the protesting students are largely not the same group of young people as the marginalised young rioters and car-torchers in the Paris banlieue, or suburbs, last year. Out there in the suburbs media vox pops commonly find unemployed Arab men and women saying a job you can be fired from sounds better than not having a job at all. Still, there are few who believe there will be more jobs in a country where youth unemployment is over twenty percent, and forty to fifty percent among young suburban ethnic men.

The general public's feeling of insecurity dominates French politics. It was expressed in the furious, frustrated rejection of the European constitution at last year's referendum. Though average incomes in France are a third higher than New Zealand's and its companies are prospering French workers worry about losing their employment protections - long holidays, a 35-hour week and security.

Sixty-eight percent of the French public oppose the CPE, according to the most recent poll on the subject. On Saturday marches were organised in 160 towns and cities. Organisers claimed 300,000 marched in Paris; the government said 80,000. I calculated maybe more than 100,000. (If you discounted the ubiquitous media presence, the participation might have fallen by a fifth).

The huge trade union CGT is preparing for a general strike sometime this week. It will surely go ahead because the government may back down, but it will never back down enough. So transport will gridlock, schools will close and public amenities won't function but baguettes and croissants will still be available at the boulangerie.

This is escalating. The universities are paralysed or virtually closed.

President Chirac is already beginning to sell out his protege, publicly telling Villepin to defuse the protests and declaring 'of course it won't be possible for people to be fired without any reason at all.' That's not what the law says as it stands.

PM Dominique de Villepin has never been elected to anything in his life. He was handpicked from the bureaucracy by President Chirac then elevated through the ministry. If he finds a way through this crisis he will be well placed to win his first campaign, for the highest office of all. But the Paris street knows he has no employment security. 'Better him than us', one of the chants went. And, as they say, the street usually gets its way.

I talked to one student on Saturday who opposed the CPE but said it would make almost no difference for many. If students want a professional job they work as unpaid interns for large corporates or organisations, hoping for paid careers at the end. He said he's much more worried about the future ability of France to provide jobs at all. Taxes and the cost of living are far too high, he complained.

As the protestors sang and chanted they passed small barbecue stands selling little duck sausages wrapped in a baguette for five euros each. About NZD$9.60 for a bird flu hotdog? Now there's something to protest about.

"The creche will be closed tomorrow because the teachers will be on strike," a small sign on the door informed yesterday when I collected Carlo. Only it was en Francaise, of course.

Great. A single evening's notice and hard luck if you have a full day's work to do. So he stayed home with me while the winter rain fell outside. He didn't mind so much. At one point he took off all his clothes, including his nappy, and cackling like a madman sprinted around the house. We've all done it.

Meanwhile his teachers marched in tens of thousands along Paris streets with other public sector employees.

Their cause is to protest against jobs for young people. Not that they would describe it exactly like that.

Keen observers of France will recall that last year mobs of rioting young people took to the streets and set fire to their neighbours' cars. There was a very convenient explanation for the riots offered by the kind of politician who was hogging TV cameras on those marches today (here's looking at you Monsieur charisma-free-zone-Francoise Hollande, leader of the Soclialist Party): The kids were alienated from society, and that was hardly surprising given youth unemployment is over twenty percent.

Well, most people, whether you think unemployment caused the riots or not, seem to think twenty percent youth unemployment is a bit too much. The government of Dominique de Villepin proposed new laws allowing businesses to hire young people on short-term contracts. There would be a trial period and kids could be sacked more easily during the trial. This would make it easier for businesses to hire them, since at the moment once you hire a Frenchie it's almost impossible to get rid of him. Or at least, you can, but you have to endure a few weeks of Carlo's teachers marching up and down the street with banners.

Now, every single one of the people I've met in Paris who have been looking for work has been trying to get an UNPAID position, just to get in the door. I can think of a couple of quality young people who looked after our kids and had good university qualifications - and they spent their holidays looking for any intro-professional position they could find, trying to get a start. Their friends all do the same; it's how a young person starts out, in many if not most cases.

So the reforms the de Villepin government proposed would more or less formalise something that happens anyway, only allow new staff to actually be paid for their work.

I'm thinking a country doesn't have sustained ten percent unemployment, and twenty percent among 18-25, unless there is a systematic problem. And the cost of hiring staff is one prime suspect.

The teachers who were marching today, of course, have nothing to gain by making it easier for new staff to enter the workforce. It would only put pressure on their conditions. It's easier to blame the government for the riots than to look at whether their protests against any change at all maybe stop the government from doing much.

It's not so surprising they can casually wildcat, inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of parents and dooming poor little Carlo to another day at home with Dad.

The Champs-Elyssee is hung with golden lights in a wine glass shape down each bare tree, a long golden avenue of glittering Christmas light sloping away from the arc de triomphe down to the Tuileries and the Louvre.

Every neighbourhood has decked a main street in lights. They twinkle in the grey chill and the bustling streets seem to bustle, huddle and shimmer.

The golden glow of Paris is sparkling and shining, with sparks of red and green Christmas tree lights.

We bought a classic European tree, pointier and more wintry-seeming than the kiwi Norfolk. We found a delicious strong of red globes and white leaf-shaped lights top string around it.

Maria made a paper star, then insisted it had to go at the 'rightest top.'

This morning I asked Maria if she could say something in French and she thought for a while and then said, 'bonjour.'

Not much to show for eleven months I thought.

"How would you say 'I'm going to the kitchen'?"

And she rattled it off, although she may have said canteen rather than kitchen.

"What about 'I've got a sore foot'?"

And she rattled it off.

"Tell Carlo to put up his arm."

And she did. And he did.

Yesterday on the phone to her uncle to sing him happy birthday, she chose the tongue of her new home.

Soon those two will be having conversations where their ignorant immigrant parents will understand not a word.

Something in the sub-zeros today.

On Saturday afternoon I ducked down the pub to watch the All Blacks play their last football game of the year, as by now you know I do.

The bar was packed with South Africans in town to watch the Springboks play France. I got talking to Flippie van der Floppie who happened to have a spare ticket and next thing you know I was out at Stade de France in the freezing cold.

The French were wonderful spectators. How could I not join in La Marseillaise, inhibited only slightly by not knowing the words? I sat in about the same position as I was in at Twickenham a week before and the atmosphere was completely different. For a start the stadium is glorious. The crowd though go to have fun. Sure they chip the other side, but they bounce up and down with delight, they sing and play. It's fun, even in the freezing cold. Asamatteroffact it's just like the Wellington Stadium but about four times bigger.

Couldn't help feeling one of those two teams will play the All Blacks on that ground in the world cup final in 2007. The South African backs are really bad. If they were half decent they would have won. The French footie team are always good to watch. They play like the All Blacks, or the other way around.

Outside our bedroom window.

The seasons have changed as if a mechanic pulled a lever.

Flecks of snow bounced on the kids yesterday as we walked home from school.

In the thuggish cold, in an overcoat, gloves, scarf and snow boots, I bravely declind a hat.

The evil night crawled down my collar until the flesh was chilled like fridge meat.

Then as we lounged snugly inside this morning fat chunky snowflakes floated lightly past, while the kids stared in wonder. "It's Christmas!" Maria said.


Watching the winter begin.

As you lay snugly in the mild Antipodean pre-summer heat dreaming of barbecues and beaches (*Wellington readers excepted, of course) fat flakes tumbled into our street for an hour or so

On Tuesday night 163 cars were burnt around France.

But no reason to be alarmed because that's "almost down to the levels seen before the riots began last month."

National Police Chief Michel Gaudin said on Tuesday the decline showed France was "getting back to normal".

That's alright then.

Maybe the lesson was a teensy bit elemetary. The new school season has begun and I'm taking night classes in, strangely enough, French pour etranger.

When I enrolled the seven page application was entirely in French, so it required a working knowledge just to get in the door.

The teacher made us all introduce ourselves, and then went around the table asking for national identity. We learned it's Columbien for men, Columbienne for women, there was la Peruviene, Bolivien, Philipine, several Indien, and then she got to me, paused, announced something about it being a bit complicated, and moved on to the Czech.

Then they came to the guy from Kosovo. What is your nationality, she frowned. Je suis Kosovo, he replied.

"But are you Bosnian," someone asked?

No. Kosovo.

"Oh, you are from Bosnia-Herzogovina."

No. Kosovo. My family were Albanian.

"Oh, you're Albanian." And they moved on while he stammered unheard, "no, I'm from Kosovo. How do I say I am from Kosovo."

At least they didn't call him a Serb.

I was the only English mother tongue there, but it's ironic it's the ummmm (you'll hate this) lingua franca of the group. Well franca certainly isn't the common lingua.

I did learn the subtley different intonation in the 'pel' sound between 'm'appell' and 'nous appelons.' Also when you sound the 't' at the end of petite and when you don't, which always had me floundering before. You know, unlike the rest of the language.