High on the list of Paris stereotypes is the one about the dog turd. My shoes (if they could talk oh the stories they would tell) are sad to say, there’s no fictive base to this one. Guillaume and I have even spent considerable amounts of time theorising as to the cause of this – but aside from fanciful theories about richer diets and increased bowel movements, I think it just comes down to more dogs in confined urban surrounds, inconsiderate owners (I mean the fact that they have huge handsome huskies better suited to Siberian snowdrifts and endless taiga rather than the Parisian concrete jungle should be evidence enough of this), and a reluctance to pooper-scoop. That’s it, plain and simple.

Like any other facets of French life, British author Stephen Clarke has also pondered this and notes it down amusingly as typical of the national pride in individualism.

He writes: ‘Why should I, dog owner, waste my precious time cleaning up after my dog or taking it to poo in a place where no one will be likely to tread in it? I don’t want it to poo in my living room or outside my front door, so I’ll walk it a few doors away, let it dump there and then go back home and get on with my life.

Some considerate Parisian dog owners do make an effort. They take their chiens to pretty pedestrian streets, where the dog won’t have its digestive system traumatised by the noise and vibrations of passing cars. The fact that street cleaners don’t clean up as often in the pedestrian streets isn’t the dog owner’s problem.’

You get the idea.

It reminds me of one evening at our local DVD store. Guillaume and I noticed a woman absorbed in a self-important bustle, dragging a ludicrously limping chihuahua who was trying desperately to stop for a leak. Don’t let anything get in the way of renting your DVDs, lady.

Not that we needed to advise her this, as she certainly wasn’t, and the pitiful pup was a sore reminder of this for any onlooker, being led by the neck and bounced along on three legs and one shoulder. Of course, when the insipid dog had a moment of rest – i.e. stationary inside the ‘video club’ – he let it all go in a moment of sheer relief. All over the floor, with a timid yet happy look on his face. This was nothing compared to the impatient tutting of the woman, and the exasperated look as the store clerk handed the cleaning product and paper towels to her with a: ‘This time, YOU clean it up.’

We killed ourselves laughing all the way home and tried to imagine how many times it had previously happened to the guy behind the counter to greet her as a serial-offender. Sheesh, why rent films when funny stuff like this happens in real life?