When the grand dames of Paris are out in full force in their big fur coats with their little fur-coated dogs and designer paper bags of all sizes, one realises that it’s high time for good will and reflection on the year just gone… and as I’ve been in France for just over six months now, I also thought a little reflection was timely (by way of a disclaimer: any arising good will is purely coincidental).

Perhaps “Things I have learned in France” would be an apt title.

Here it goes…

• My life is now all the richer for knowing what a K-way and cagoule are (the first, pronounced “ka-way”, is about as necessary as a 2-Second Tent for any French summer holiday. Basically it’s a rain jacket in a bum bag. Even though I’ve succumbed to other French “must haves”, you’ll never see this little black duck toting a K-way. The second is a faceless balaclava, and is considered tongue-in-cheek as one of the regional specialities of the Savoy).

• I’ve come to the realisation that it’s not just France (or Russia) per se, but bureaucracy that frustrates life the world over. As Guillaume and I often say, if you want to make something close to impossible to achieve – in Britain, illegalise it; in France, bureaucratise it.

• The expression vachement has nothing to do with cows, but is instead slang for ‘amazingly’ or ‘extremely.’

• There is no rush to eat galette des rois on the Epiphany weekend. Oh no, far from it. It’s February, we now have seven fèves, and I don’t see any sign of it abating. I laugh now to think that I was worried that they were all going to go to waste after January 6…