If You Go Down to the Sales Today...

Image by Nils Geylen via Flickr

In the U.K., you had just recovered from Christmas when The Sales were upon you and if you were of the tendency that has had its eye on a particular cashmere jersey for three months but baulked at the price tag, then you would sharpen up your elbows and head for the shops.

In France, of course, these things are better regulated....well,  the French shopkeepers think they are.
You can't just have sales when you feel like it, that would be unfair competition for those who didn't feel like it, so you all have to have sales at the same time - though there are shops which get round this by frequently 'liquidating' their stock ahead of remodelling the store...i.e., moving a cash desk.

It's not worth nipping out between Christmas and New Year in search of bargains in the supermarkets either.
Those chocolates will not be reduced by fifty per cent until the last member of the family has returned to work after the break and the womens' magazines are full of post holiday diets.....
While as for the turkeys, it is amazing how a bird with a sell by date of 31/12 and present on the shelves at closing time on 30/12 can have metamorphosed into full price turkey portions with a sell by date of 07/01 by opening time on the next day instead of whole bird marked down to half price.
Just who was it who was supposed to be 'a nation of shopkeepers'?

Having moved to Costa Rica and experienced supermarket shopping here there are two things I could recommend to Mssrs. Leclerc et al. for their French operations....

One.
Armed guards on the car park who also note any damage to your car and stick a note on the windscreen as to circumstances thereof.

This would put a stop to the wild side swiping and bumper crushing so typical of French supermarket carparks, though I'm not sure that I wouldn't prefer the perpetrators to be shot rather than just identified....
Especially when they try to claim on your insurance on the lines of Old Harry's marine insurance claim...
'Stationary end of pier slot machine flying no signals carried away my jibboom...'

It would also empty the car park of 'gens de voyage' threatening to smear your car windows with filthy rags while attempting to sell you overpriced baskets made in China.

Two.
Car parks that are designed for people with large cars and larger ideas of space when it comes to parking them......

A far cry from my local French supermarkets which always seemed to be arranged in a herringbone fashion with the one way systems deliberately arranged so as to make turning into the spaces provided as difficult as possible and extricating your car an exercise in gymnastics when the two bright sparks who have parked on either side of you while you are shopping decide to huddle close to you in case of a German invasion.

I have entered my car via the hatchback more than once.....and, thanks to the brainwashing administered by my schoolmistresses, have done so by sitting on the tailgate and wriggling forward backwards, if you see what I mean, to avoid awarding passersby an unseemly view of my backside - something we were always solemnly warned  to avoid.
We used to speculate about these shibboleths as schoolgirls...but, ours not to reason why, ours just to get a slipped disc obeying the rules.

Had suggestion Two been adopted in the north of France we might not have had the incident of the 'doigt d'honneur'....the raised finger which is the French equivalent of the 'V' sign.

Two drivers, one male one female, were competing for a car parking space....and from my experience it isn't just the shortage of places which is the problem, but the awkwardness of design that makes manoevring such a nightmare.
Both became incensed and high words were exchanged.
Finally the woman managed to park and the man drove off, but not before giving her the finger.
Typical car park rage.....

But not a typical outcome.
The woman was a deputy maire in the town in which the car park was situated. After doing her shopping she complained to the police who, instead of uttering soothing words, shot off to arrest the man.
He was an immigrant. From his name one would imagine that he did not have the typical Nordic colouring.

He found himself held at the police station for forty eight hours.....the police could not do this on their own initiative, they needed the permission of the public prosecutor....the 'procureur'.

The charges? 'Outrage' to a representative of the state...to wit, a deputy maire....one of the many classes of person so protected...everything from a gendarme to the President.

The man said he did not know she was a deputy maire....the woman admitted that nothing he said indicated that he knew...the man admitted making the gesture....so...a storm in a teacup.

No.
He was brought to court and the procureur sought a sentence of five months in the jug...on the grounds that elected representatives and functionaries of the state were entitled to protection at all times, even if not in pursuance of their duties.

A dangerous doctrine.
Wives of councillors who give them a curtain lecture on the virtues of correct positioning of the loo seat risk being bundled off to the cells in their negliges....
A landowner who finds the maire illegally fishing in his lake and gives him the verbal one two might find himself wrapped in his own lines and carted away....
Carla Bruni, upbraiding the President for not getting up for the night feeds, might find herself following Marie Antoinette to la Conciergerie...so handy for the Palais de Justice...

Clearly, the judge....another whose name does not bring up associations of blond hair and blue eyes...was aware of the dangers.

He fined the man 38 Euros.
For insults...not 'outrage'.

And they worry that Le Pen might gain power.....

Law in inaction

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You are sitting in a cell at the gendarmerie barracks. You are in garde a vue....detention.

You are sitting there because when the gendarme leapt out of his unmarked car to give you a speeding ticket you called him something uncomplimentary......and while this was something that the average British policeman would regard as mere vulgar abuse, the gendarme called it 'outrage'. An offence.
Given the sensitive nature of the forces of law and order in France they could probably interpret
'It's a fair cop, gov'
 as some involved insult to their probity so whatever you said you were on a hiding to nothing from the minute you opened your mouth.

You also bit the officer's bare arm when he countered your reluctance to accompany him to the station by placing your neck in a stranglehold so tight that you could not breath.
This attempt at survival was qualified as 'rebellion' - another offence - and while you cool your heels the gendarme is busy booking a couple of weeks off sick to recover from your attentions.

At last...the door opens and you are escorted to the adjutant's office.
He proposes to take your statement.
Not being familiar with French police and legal practice and given the misunderstandings that have already arisen, you ask for a lawyer.
The adjutant smiles.
'They're on strike.'

Witnessing you foaming at the mouth at this news, the arresting officer mentally adds rabies to the list of tests he will require.

Lawyers being on strike is a strange phenomenon, but, as you will have guessed, it involves money.
Most things about lawyers do.

In this case, the duty lawyers who are supposed to attend gendarmerie barracks and Hotels de Police at two hours notice in order to assist the involuntary guests of these establishments are on strike because they have not been paid  for the last two and a half months.
Not as in 'not paid by their clients' but as in 'not paid by the government' who are responsible for coughing up.

Mark you, as long as you keep your mouth shut until you get to court you might be better off without some of the lawyers you might encounter.

Recently one bright spark saw fit to defend two youths caught in possession of a miniscule amount of pot by advancing the argument that they were unable to remember anything about the circumstances in which the packet came into their possession as long use of pot had affected their memories.

I think even
'It's a fair cop, gov'
might have had more favourable results.

I had not long been in France when I read that lawyers were on strike and coming from a U.K. background it seemed incredible...after all, as a lawyer in independent practice, if you don't work you don't drink.

This was before I had grasped the astronomic sums required even by lawyers at the bottom of the food chain in France. They can afford to strike without reducing their intake of Romanee-Conti.
What one of the local hacks will want for a simple matter would enable you to hire a QC and two juniors with unlimited refreshers....and you're by no means sure he will do a good job.
They're not all Maitre Eolas.

Quite apart from his or her level of interest and competence there is always the local factor to take into account.....is anyone important involved?
If so, you will find that your lawyer's attention is more firmly fixed on not giving offence in that quarter than on any aspect of the case for his client.....the one that's paying him an arm and a leg.
A client is a client, but a local bigwig is forever.

They claim that their fees are so high because seventy per cent of it goes on keeping their business running...
Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
In the provinces at least they all seem to inhabit seedy premises at the top of ancient buildings which don't have lifts.

One accident compensation specialist of my acquaintance regularly has clients with parts of their anatomy encased in plaster bumping up three flights of stairs on their backsides to reach his office. Both he and they take this for granted.

When my leg was in plaster my lawyer was most startled to be summoned downstairs to have our discussion in the cafe on the ground floor of the building...this had never happened to him before.
Given his unsatisfactory performance it's unlikely to happen to him again.

At the successful conclusion of another case, I was startled to receive telephone call from the lawyer who had handled it.
Bearing in mind that he had demanded money upfront before even starting the case I was even more startled to learn that he was reminding me of what a good job he had done and suggesting a further backhander.
My counter suggestion that he write to me with the details met with an aggrieved silence.
After all, in the conduct of his own affairs he follows the advice he gives his clients.
Sign nothing.

In East Anglia years ago there was an alternative version of the traditional crop rotation.
No longer 'wheat, barley, turnips and clover', but, given the wealth of the farmers concerned
'Barley, barley and a Mediterranean cruise.'
I can only imagine that something similar applies to French lawyers.......
'Boundary dispute, tax dispute and off to Thailand for a month on the proceeds.'

Still, when the lawyers are on strike, the cases reported have more savour and the one that sticks in my memory is the one I read about all that time ago when just arrived in France, in an unreconsctructed rural area.

It was a traffic offence. Drunken driving. A gentleman of a certain age.

Without benefit of representation the defendant rose to present his case to the President of the tribunal.
He utterly denied the offence.
What had happened was this.

He had come in from milking the cows and had had a glass of gnole (home distilled eau de vie at several times the proof of the commercial stuff).
As usual.
He had done a few other outside jobs and come in for breakfast, with a litre of (vin) rouge.
As usual.
He had done another few jobs and then met a friend in the bar to talk about selling some ducks. He had had a few beers.
As usual.
He's gone home for lunch, with another litre of rouge.
As usual.

Then something unusual happened. His son in law telephoned him to announce that his wife had given birth to their first child.
The defendant's first grandchild.
He had split a bottle of champagne with his wife to celebrate.
He had dropped in at the bar to celebrate with the boys. A few beers.
He had then driven to the hospital in the local town and split another bottle of champagne with the proud mother....how the baby was excluded from this remains a mystery...before driving home.

It was while driving the wrong way down a one way street that he had met the municipal police car coming up. It was all beginning to sound like Gerard Hoffnung's address to the Oxford Union in 1958.

The officers took it upon themselves to breathalyse him. He was multiple times over the limit.

How, asked the President, did he explain this?

Simple. As M. le President might imagine he was somewhat emotional at the birth of his first grandchild and when the police presented him with the tube he had taken breath several times while blowing into it.
Five times in fact and as M. le President would observe, if he divided the results presented by the police by five he, M. le President ,would note that the answer arrived at was just under the limit.

Therefore he was not guilty.

He was awarded points off his licence and a recommendation to let his wife drive him to the hospital for the birth of the next grandchild, and, knowing that particular court, I expect he just nipped round to the back office and handed over the folding stuff to have the judgement expunged from the computer records..