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.....

Humbug...but don't put it on Facebook.

Image via Wikipedia

You may have decided that all the commercial hype of Christmas is not for you.....no garish lights on your house, making all visitors to the front door resemble something from a zombie film epic.....no extravagant presents dropped in your friends' gardens from diamond studded helicopters....no obligatory parties where someone will inevitably want to use the swimming pool even if it has been emptied for the winter....no Christmas holiday in the Bahamas to get away from all of the above and annoy your friends and family who have been counting on you doing all of the above.

You're going to have a quiet family Christmas at home with home made presents and Kings College nine lessons and carols on the radio and you've already started knitting the dog a festive bone.

Now, if you live in France, whatever you do, do not encourage others to follow your example...and certainly not on Facebook, or you risk a visit from the bold gendarmes inviting you to spend the festive season with them instead of with your family.

French courts have  a tendency to believe that what is posted on Facebook is not a private but a public matter...(here)...which can mean that posting what you would like to have said to the gendarme when he gave you a speeding ticket will be treated exactly as if you had said it to the gendarme concerned and you risk being jugged, while moaning about your boss or your firm on Facebook  can lead to the boss or firm deciding that you have incited rebellion....wonderful, the French vocabulary at times...among the downtrodden workers on their thirty five hour week with two hour lunch breaks and regular 'ponts' - bridges - to link one public holiday with another and you will be dismissed and sent to live under the pont d'Avignon rather than dancing upon it.

Why would it matter that you have encouraged others to follow your example in turning your backs on the hype of Christmas?

Because you are encouraging people to boycott Christmas.

And boycotting stuff can be illegal in France...according to the Chancellerie....the bit of the French government that controls the prosecutors, those independent magistrates whom the European Court of Human Rights declare to have no independence of government whatsoever.

These prosecutors have been encouraged to crack down on any manifestation  of  public incitement to discrimination against a nation....for fear of retaliation by the nation concerned it appears, though this is well submerged in the blurb which attempts to use legislation directed at incitement to racism or sexism to justify repression of boycotts aimed at particular countries.

Recently, a legislator, a senator I believe, was hauled up for invading a supermarket and encouraging a boycott of Israeli products in protest against the spread of Israeli settlements on the West Bank.....this was supposed to be and was treated as equivalent to racism.

How would the prosecutors have handled the boycott of South African products in the era of apartheid?
What about boycotting Chinese products on the grounds of its treatment of Tibet?
Or on the grounds of its use of slave and child labour?

Independent as they claim to be, with one voice they would prosecute any incitement to boycott products on these grounds, although the legislation upon which such a prosecution depends was created to attack the very basis of the policies which attract the wish to boycott the products of these regimes.

But Christmas has no country...it is universal - except for some U.K. local councils who seem to believe that it offends non Christians - so you run no risk if you encourage your friends to follow your example.

Hah! This is France!

Now, the French claim to be a logical nation...if you overlook the strange nature of some of their premises...so let us approach this in the spirit of French logic, just as the independent French prosecutors will do.

Any fule kno that Father Christmas lives in the North Pole.

Any fule also kno that Russia has been laying claim to said Pole by hammering national flags into the seabed under said Pole.

Thus, Christmas is Russian.

Your statement of opposition to the hype of Christmas and your encouragement of others to oppose it likewise is thus incitement to boycott Russian products......and thus falls within the remit of the instructions...um, no advice...given to the public prosecutors.

Whatever you do, when the gendarmes come to arrest you, do not resist arrest.
Even if you can't breathe because the gendarme has his arm across your throat.....do not bite him.
The independent prosecutors are not interested in your little problems.

And why would France be worried about Russian retaliation for your defiance of Christmas hype?


Look whose hand is on the gas taps of Europe.