Today is the first day of the winter sales in France. There are many things the French do better than us in the UK and there are many things they do worse than us. For me the jury is still out on the issue of sales.

There is a law that says shops in France can only hold a sale for a couple of weeks in January and for a few weeks in July. I have no idea why this might be. My first thoughts were that this was quite a good thing. None of this nonsense of having to get up at 3 am on Boxing Day to go and stand in the cold for hours with other sad people just to save 50 pence.

But thinking about it, having the sales in 2 short regulated periods means that the queues and scrums of people are going to be worse. At least in the UK, you can wait a few weeks until the next ‘sale’ comes along.

There was an article in the press over the weekend that suggested that the French Government are thinking of relaxing the laws in an effort to get people to spend more. So I guess they are have reservations about the whole thing.

Anyway, I still think that there is something civilized about having the sales periods regulated. I am not really sure why I think that, but I just do.

We were in some of the bigger stores over the new year and they were heaving with people even then. I was surprised because I would have thought most people would be happy to wait until now before going shopping. However wandering around the various stores it became obvious that most of the shoppers were tourists (mostly Brits) who were probably just in town for the holiday.

I don’t know if there were queues outside the big stores or not this morning, but thinking about it, the traffic was a lot worse than usual. However, that could have been due to anything. If there were queues, I am glad I wasn’t there because queuing is definitely one of the things that the French don’t do well (indeed they hardly do it all).

Having gotten out of the habit of writing over the Xmas break, I am almost having to force myself to write this. Well, maybe not force, but certainly make an effort.

Paris is now back to normal after the holiday. The city never really stopped but it did slow down. Christmas is not such a big thing in France as the UK. People do celebrate it of course, but not in such an extravagant manner. There’s notably less time off too. This year with both Xmas and New Years Day falling on a Sunday, there was no national holiday. Most people seemed to take a few days holiday around Xmas or a few days around New Year; but very few took the whole week.

It’s always a strange time because the company I work for is based in England and they have a week off as standard and most people seem to find unused holidays to pad this out to 2 weeks. My customers don’t understand why this happens and usually get quite irate at the lack of response to any questions they have at this time. Of course, our dear Gaelic cousins think nothing of disappearing en masse for the whole of August every year.

Driving was once again a pleasure, and on one day, I managed to get to see all 3 of my customers in one day and also spend some time with them. Normally the traffic ensures that I only ever manage to get to two of them in any one day.

We are certainly having some seasonal weather. I was in the UK for Xmas, but when we returned on the 28th, there was snow on the ground. It snowed again a few days later too . Since then it’s stayed bitterly cold. As is normal, there haven’t been many frosts in the city, but out at Orly the temperature has been regularly dropping below zero at night. Roll on summer!

For the last 2 years, we have spent New Years Eve out mingling with the locals. I have to confess that I find this a vastly overrated pastime. There always seems to be an undercurrent of menace, and the city is crawling with Police who definitely don’t join in the festive atmosphere. 2 years ago, there was something of a riot outside our apartment when the local fuzz decided it was time everyone went home and charged the partygoers with batons, dogs and horses.

So this year, after a pleasant meal (at a vastly inflated price!) we headed back home and watched the revelers making their way to the Eifel Tower and then trudging back again from the comfort of our balcony.

There were a few small firework displays visible around the city, and out in the suburbs there was the usual round of car burning that is now apparently the norm on New Years Eve.

For my part, I saw 2006 in with a large glass of Macallan – Marvelous!