Charles Bremner - Times Online - WBLG

Paris opera joins the French free-for-all

As I pedalled a Vélib' to the office this morning, the Renault behind was angry because I was going too slowly in a quiet narrow street. So the driver blew his horn and swore at me. Such behaviour is normal in Paris.

I rounded the corner into the Place de L'Opéra and saw a crude banner draped across the splendid facade of Charles Garnier's palace. "Opera on Strike", it said. They have cancelled tonight's performance of la Traviata because the stage staff walked out. President Sarkozy wants to trim their generous retirement conditions as state workers and they don't like it. 

I shrugged mentally because in France, c'est normal to punish the public in order to press your case. Today is the start of the schools' All Saints holiday week and many families are leaving town. So cabin staff at Air France have chosen the weekend to strike in order to cause maximum disruption. The airports are chaos with cancelled flights, but such bloody-minded behaviour is traditional, so few question it.

In the same way, Paris region commuters had their lives disrupted for several days this week by a rolling railway strike. Yet there was barely a squeak of criticism from politicians or media, and least of all from the centre-right government. Sarko is so eager to get the public sector to accept his mild pension reforms that he is showering them with praise.

France's 10 cultural favourites

Say "French culture" and you might think of the Louvre, Proust or Truffaut movies. So what are the top 10 "cultural goods" that the French bought last year? That's them in the picture, ranked according to earnings in millions of euros. Number one and three of the other oeuvres are video games from Japanese companies. There are five DVDs, no music and one book.

Well, at least the book is high brow:. Les Bienveillantes, the novel as long as a phone directory about the Holocaust that won last year's Goncourt Prize, the highest literary award. Yes, but... it was written by an American. Jonathan Littell's feat, writing in French in the voice of a German SS officer, was the phenomenon of the last literary season. The only all-French item in the top 10 is Camping, a low-brow comedy hit adored by Kevin and his parents.

So what can we conclude from the list, produced yesterday by le Parisien newspaper? It shows that French taste, for all the official efforts to promote Gallic creativity and l'exception française, is pretty much the same as everyone else's. Konami's Pro Evolution Soccer series (Winning 11 in the USA) is hugely popular all over Europe. Perhaps Littell's book does prove the exception to the popular culture of the rest since it is a very heavy read. I suspect, though, that many have bought it because it was a phenomenon and gave up after 20 pages, like Steven Hawking's  Brief History of Time in the late1980s.

It might also be uplifting to see that one of the video games is designed to sharpen the intellect: Nintendo's Dr Kawashima's Brain Training, also known as How Old is Your Brain and Brain Age.   

It will be a comfort to cultural patriots that the dreaded steamroller of US entertainment is responsible for only a minority of the 10 items. Only two, the movie Ice Age 2, and the Prison Break TV series are all-American. The Chronicles of Narnia was produced by Disney but with a lot British input and based on the work of a very English writer (C.S.Lewis.) Harry Potter's Goblet of Fire was produced by Warner, but it was British in cast, direction, location and story. Les Bienveillantes, the only high-brow item among the 10 biens culturels, was written by an American, but...he did chose to do it first in French

Perhaps the most misleading thing about the list is that it heaps video games, television series and a novel into the same basket and call them all cultural goods. Entertainment is a better word, but its French equivalent, divertissement, sounds too frivolous.

On the publishing front, France is geared up for another "Anglo-Saxon" onslaught. Bookshops across the country were open at midnight last night to launch Harry Potter et les Reliques de la Mort, the French edition of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows . Some 240,000 copies of the English version have already been sold in France since it came out in July and over two million of the French version are expected to sell here.  In keeping with French tradition, the trade unions have been protesting over the extension of the bookshop opening hours to start unloading the last Potter adventure. 

Lighter learning for French kids

You can't say that President Sarkozy is not trying to get to grips with France's most intractable ills. While he has been presiding over a French green revolution this week, his government has decided to attack the eternal problem of school bags.

Loyal readers might remember my posting on the dreadful weight that French kids lug daily to and from school. Since then, nothing has changed. As people have noted, the photo on my last post illustrates the problem.

It's been 28 years since the government decreed that school bags should not weigh more than 10 percent of the child's weight. A couple of weeks ago, the main parents' association (FCPE) took weighing scales to schools and found that the average 13-year-old is packing eight kilogrammes (17.6 pounds) on his or her back. That is 23 percent of the weight of an average 35-kilo child.  In other words, it's equivalent to a 70-kilo (154 pound) adult having to haul around 16 kilos (34 pounds).

Xavier Darcos, Sarko's Education Minister, has announced a plan to "turn the burden school bag into the healthy school bag" (passer du cartable fardeau au cartable santé). It's a mixture of ideas, starting with the formidable challenge of getting French school teachers to change their ways.

Darcos wants them to stop ordering kids to equip themselves with heavy folders and exercise-books and to let them put more than one subject in a folder. Anyone who has lived in France knows how these fournitures scolaires -- which account for 28 percent of the contents of the average bag -- are the teacher's prerogative and not to be trifled with.

Publishers will be given incentives to lighten their text-books, splitting them into volumes if necessary. These account for 40 percent of the weight.

A prize is also to be offered to manufacturers of bags who can produce the best one-kilo cartable. These are 32 percent of the total weight.

In addition local authorities are going to be asked to install lockers in schools and high-tech solutions such as USB keys and electronic books are to be tried out.

There are of course snags to all of this. They arise mainly from the difficulty of getting the extremely conservative French education establishment to change its habits. And I don't see teenagers going for a standard official cartable. The right brand is vital to le look, as my 13-year-old daughter told me before heaving her military-style rucksack onto her shoulder and buckling under its weight.   

The French name game

 

Tell me your first name and I'll tell you your age and social class. You can play this game in most countries, but it has become especially easy in France in recent decades. Meet a Kevin, for example, and you are talking to a teenager from a working class back-ground. He would have been born in the early 1990s when Kevin was the top first name given to French boys. Meet a Laure, and she will probably be around 30 with parents in the upper professional classes. Laure was the top girl's name in this group from 1970-80.

The widening social divide in the choice of French first names is familiar to anyone who lives in France. It is well set out in an exhaustive 450-page annual study called La Cote des Prénoms. This year's version, just produced by Joséphine Besnard, a polling expert and political scientist, makes the point that the "popular classes" have given up the old tradition of following the name fashions of higher-income groups. Instead, they have imported boys' names from US entertainment with a "Celtic-American" sound and from Italy:  Mathéo is this year's all-round top choice. Also in the top 10 are Enzo, Noah, Killian and Nathan.  For girls, the fashion is for exotic, romantic-sounding foreign names such as Clara, Maelys, Louane and Inès.

Sarko seeks distance from Mad Bernie, his losing pal

Meet the new minister for French sport. Two days after France's rugby rout at the hands of Argentina, Bernard Laporte, the team manager, joins President Sarkozy's cabinet tomorrow with a loser's aura and the threat of investigation for tax fraud.

Political insiders are betting that Laporte, 43, blamed for France's pitiful fourth place in the World Cup, will not last long in the post of State Secretary for Youth and Sport. Sarko offered ambiguous support over the weekend after word that inspectors had reported false book-keeping and other serious irregularities in Laporte's varied business activites.

Cécilia Sarkozy in her own words

For a woman who says she detests the limelight, Cécilia Sarkozy has done an admirable job for the past couple of days. First she posed for a Paris Match spread (last post) that splashed onto the news stands on the day her divorce was announced. Today, she has wrapped up the Elysée saga with a heart-to-heart in a provincial newspaper -- after the palace announced that she would say nothing.

Here are key extracts, or turn to the full version (in French) in L'Est Républicain. I'll make no comment, except to note that this week, with the president's personal life going so public, is something new and healthy for France.  A poll in today's Parisien shows that 92 percent of the public say the divorce will not alter their opinion of Sarko. Fifty percent believe that the break-up will have no serious effect on him, with 28 percent believing it will have a positive impact and 16 percent negative.

The Cécilia interview:

I feel that it's my duty to myself to explain why I no longer want to play the role -- if there is one -- of French First Lady. Also to explain the reasons why I asked for a divorce and why I want to withdraw from public life.

In 2005, I met someone and fell in love and left. Perhaps it was a bit rushed, given the media attention under which I was living at the time. I wanted to behave correctly and come back to try to rebuild something, to return the the principles to which I was accustomed....

The Sarkozys split officially and Cécilia makes a splash

[Update note: This was posted just before the Elysée made the divorce official. Here's the latest]

Nicolas Sarkozy has chosen the day of the first national strike against his government to announce that he has separated from Cécilia.

Sarko could hardly keep quiet any longer with rumours inflating the soap opera at the Elysée Palace. A 15-word statement from the palace simply said that the Sarkoz's had separated by mutual consent and that they would say nothing further.

Le Monde, the most authoritative newspaper, has confirmed that they signed a request for a divorce by mutual consent on Monday. They are to return to the judge in six weeks to finalise the divorce. Sarkozy had resisted an announcement because he was still hoping that she would change her mind, it said.

For days, the media have been reporting their separation as a fait accompli. Yet David Martinon, Sarko's spokesman, was forced this morning to endure another pointless grilling. "I have no comment" was his only reply to a barrage of questions. The Cécilia question virtually blotted out serious business such as the public sector strike that has paralysed France today.

But the most bizarre part of today's episode is Cécilia Sarkozy's decision to splash herself across the cover and four inside pages of Paris Match. This is the woman who complains about being harrassed by the media and who protects her privacy with law suits. Yet here she is, in the week of her separation from the president, volunteering for a photo-shoot by Match.

To do the glossy portraits, posed in a hotel near the palace, the magazine hired Philippe Warrin, author of Sarko's official presidential portrait. Naturally, Match does nothing to clarify the state of the couple. It sticks to its usual froth about "Cécilia... une femme sereine" who "has made an impact as a redoubtable warrior in the shadows", whatever that means. The departing first lady asked for the pictures to be published because she wanted to "update her image", Match said.

Deference for the president's consort is dropping away elsewhere. Le Nouvel Observateur called her a contradiction who is "attached to her freedom and moved by immense ambition". She does not just want to be someone's wife, it noted. "This is an infernal paradox for the child of the rich districts who has vritually never worked... a pretty girl who has never really existed beyond (her) men."

Sympathy is wearing thin among the Socialist opposition, which lived through its own soap opera this year with the separation of Ségolène Royal, its presidential candidate, from François Hollande, the party leader and father of their four children.

Did Sarko, as rumoured last spring, take the country for a ride, doing a deal with Cécilila to return to him for the presidential campaign and then divorcing after he wins ? Claude Bartolone, a senior Socialist, said on Europe1 radio: "During the campaign, they announced that they couldn't live without one-another and that it was the energy of their partnership that gave Nicolas Sarkozy the capacity to be the candidate. Now we are back to real life and a fair number of people are going to have the feeling that they were taken for a ride during the campaign."

Historical note: Sarko will become France's second leader to divorce while in office. The Napoleon Bonaparte became the first when he unhitched from the Empress Joséphine in 1809.

Even Libération put aside its squeamishness over presidential private life and did a number on the Sarko saga today.

The Sarkozys have separated -- say French media

It is hard not to feel sorry for Nicolas Sarkozy this week. France was kicked out of the rugby world cup on Saturday. Tonight, public sector workers start paralysing the country with a one-day strike against the president's plan to abolish some of their privileges.  And now we hear that Sarko and Cécilia have finally made their separation formal in front of a judge.

According to the website of le Nouvel Observateur, a reliable news magazine, the Sarkozys went to a judge on Monday to register their split. LCI, the main cable news channel, gave a different version. Only Mrs Sarkozy, 49, went to a judge and signed a request to start divorce proceedings, they say. Once again, the Elysée Palace is neither confirming nor denying the reports. They cannot continue to do so for long, given that the rumours of separation of the past couple of weeks now appear to have been well-founded.

A question now arises. How can the Sarkozys engage in divorce or legal separation since the president's immunity means that he cannot be the object of any civil or criminal proceedings while in office? It's also not clear why they would have appeared before a judge at this stage. Requests for legal separation or the start of divorce are handled by lawyers. In French divorces by mutual consent, only one appearance before a judge (in private) is necessary and that cames months after the suit is filed and the details settled. It is unlikely that the details of the Sarkozy separation or eventual divorce will ever be made public. [A good discussion of the legal aspects can be found on Rue89, the excellent news website. The photo above comes from them].

The separation of the turbulent Sarkozy couple is no surprise. Apart from her mission to Libya for the Bulgarian nurses in mid-July, Cécilia has taken part in no official activity since Bastille Day, July 14. She was visibly unhappy in just about all her appearances with Sarko after his election in May.

Sarkozy will be the object of sympathy and the celebrity press will now search flat out for any new partner. Sarko himself seems to be in fairly good spirits. He marked France's ejection from the rugby on Saturday night by holding a party with his show-biz friends at Rebellato, an Italian restaurant in the XVI arrondissement. According to le Canard Enchaîné today, Sarko entertained the party by joining Johnny Hallyday in a rendition of Tennessee, one of the great French rocker's oldest hits. Sarko was in fine mood when I spent a late-night hour with him, along with French reporters, in a Moscow hotel last week.
 

Don't kill us, say French shop-keepers

  Imagine a country where stores could cut prices year-round, trade on Sundays and hold sales whenever they want to. Imagine if just about anyone could offer taxi services, open a pharmacy or a hair salon where they choose.

Americans and others may have no trouble doing this, but not the French. These ideas have caused such anger that some of them have already been dropped by an expert panel that is advising President Sarkozy on how to "liberate growth".

Sarko gave the job of running the commission to Jacques Attali, the banker-guru who started out in the 1980s as ideas-man to François Mitterrand, the Socialist president.  After three months, he handed in their interim proposals last night. Grabbing the headlines are suggestions that France should drop or loosen its strict regulations over retailing. These were designed in recent decades to protect small and medium stores from discounting by large chains. Stores may, for example, only hold sales for two six-week periods every year, on dates set by the state.

France holds conflicting views on all of this. Everyone wants to preserve the town and village bakers, grocers and bookshops that give the country its charm -- and attract all the home-buying foreigners. At the same time, everyone flocks to the out-of-town centres commerciaux to load up at weekends and they do not like paying more for goods and services there than their European neighbours.

The Sarkozy rumour update

There was little air left to breathe in the shoe-box-like briefing room in the street beside the Elysée palace this morning. Dozens of reporters had packed into the tight space for the delayed weekly briefing by President Sarkozy's spokesman. It was not the president's action on international poverty day that interested them, nor his commiseration with the defeated national rugby side.  We were all there of course because of The Rumour. And of course, we got nothing.

David Martinon, the young diplomat who is Sarkozy's spokesman, batted off questions on the presidential marriage with the fastidious disdain that graduates of the Ecole Nationale d 'Administration (ENA) do so well. "I have strictly no comment to make," was all he would say.  "Would you care to philosophize on the refusal to comment on these reports?" asked one frustrated scribe. "I haven't any comment," came the answer.   

For almost a week, newsrooms and the internet have been buzzing with word that Nicolas and Cécilia were about to make their separation formal. Most of the traditional media remain squeamish about touching the subject of their ruler's private life. A couple of outlets have reported divorce announcements that have not materialised while others, such as Libération today, have chosen to debate the ethics of rumour-reporting as a way of conveying the gossip without tarnishing their principles.

Libé reports tens of thousands of visits to items on the rumour on its internet site, but it has still not deigned to investigate the state of the couple in the newspaper. Instead, it has opened a forum on the theme : "Should we talk about it or not?".

So there's nothing to report beyond noting that Cécilia Sarkozy has not appeared at any function as the president's spouse since Bastille Day in July. Martinon confirmed today that she will not go with him on a state visit to Morocco next week. Normally the première dame would be there.

So what, some may say. In contrast to my high-minded French colleagues, who are hapy to gossip over dinner but not touch the subject in print, I would say that the state of the marriage of the head of state and chief executive does have a bearing on public life and citizens are entitled to hear about it. This is especially the case since Sarkozy was so destabilised during his wife's last absence in 2005, when he was Interior Minister and would-be president.

England inflicts rugby gloom on France

The English destroy the dream of an entire nation. So said the headline in le Parisien this morning after England ejected France from the rugby world cup in a semi-final that had stirred a wave of patriotic hope.

Rugby is only a game -- and one that is played only in parts of France -- but the match yesterday had been invested with all kinds of symbolism. It's always like that when the two ancestral enemies face off on a sports field. After their miraculous elimination of New Zealand last week, France believed that Gallic flair would triumph over the stolid rosbifs. They led for much of the game, but the genius was missing. Instead of daring runs to touch down, they kicked and blocked. The word today was that France blew it "by playing like the English".

Bernard Lapasset, the president of the French Rugby Association, sounded off on this theme after the 9-14 loss, largely to the magic boot of Jonny Wilkinson. "I don't understand the way we played tonight," Lapasset said. "When you play against the English, you don't play like the English. You play à la francaise and pass the ball."

The man being blamed this morning, inevitably, is Bernard Laporte, the  team  manager who is due to take over as President Sarkozy's Sports Minister next week. Sarko will still give him the job, but he may not last long.   

As drunken English fans were still staggering around the Left Bank early this morning, l'Equipe, the sports daily, summed up the gloom. "The only thing that is beautiful is victory, especially when it is achieved against our strange neighbours. ... The big lesson of yesterday's match is this: the English won because they never gave up being English. So English."

A disappointed French fan summed up the disgust on the lunchtime TF1 television news: "Ces anglais nous feront chier jusqu' à la fin de nos jours  [Roughly: Those English are going to screw us around until the end of our days]

France will now try to forget about rugby for a while -- at least after next weekend's final -- but the defeat is adding to a down mood as the country faces the first show-down between President Sarkozy and the unions (last posting).

It's certainly not going to be a great week for Sarkozy, who watched France's rugby defeat in the stadium along with half a dozen of his ministers. By all accounts, he is going to go public this week, possibly as early as tomorrow, over his estrangement from Cécilia. I have held off posting on this for a week because nothing has emerged beyond the fact that Mrs Sarkozy spent a couple of days in Geneva. I have heard that David Martinon, the presidential spokesman, will make a statement on the couple's separation. That comes from a reliable source in the Elysée Palace, but he cautioned that plans there are changing all the time. And that's getting away from the rugby.

[For anyone interested in seeing how the rugby, Cecilia and French politics tie together, here's a link to a TV show that I took part in yesterday on Canal +. They have split the topics into segments.]

The man who can stop Sarko, perhaps

France is awaiting the results of a big match this week -- and not the rugby world cup. Thursday marks the first and possibly crucial play-off in the contest between Nicolas Sarkozy and the labour unions which are determined to block his march to reform.

I have just spent an interesting hour with Bernard Thibault, boss of the CGT, the biggest and most militant of the French unions, ahead of the one-day national strike by rail workers and the Paris transport system.  Thibault is the man who, as a young rail union leader, brought down Alain Juppé, Jacques Chirac's first Prime  Minister, with strikes that paralysed the country for weeks. That was in 1995 and much has changed since then but the issue remains the same: the privileged retirement system enjoyed by public sector workers.

Thibault, 48, a likeable communist with ideas in tune with his early Beatles haircut, stands for everything about France that sends Sarko into despair: intransigent, bloody-minded resistance to reform. He is predicting a mass walk-out to make Thursday's one-day stoppage a clear warning to Sarko to back off. 

Putin dampens Sarko's party

Afternoon update from the Kremlin:

Sarko's version of his bonding session with the master of Russia (last post) was a little implausible but we didn't expect to have it deflated so quickly. Vladimir Putin has just came out before us with President Sarkozy in the Catherine's Hall and contradicted the French president's claim that he had come round on Iran's nuclear programme. On top of that, his cold tones and stiff body language made a mockery of Sarkozy's voluble mateyness towards "my dear Vladimir".

Putin said nothing to substantiate Sarkozy's claim last night on Iran. "We do not have information that Iran is trying to create a nuclear weapon," said Putin. "We operate on the principle that Iran does not have those plans." There was nothing new on Kosovo and and only diplomatic banalities on the rest.

The pair offered a slice of political theatre as they stood side-by-side at white wooden lecterns, both in dark blue suits. Under the spectacular blue and white dome, the short dark-haired man on the left gesticulated and smiled as he talked of the "very fascinating, very positive" sessions in which Putin and he had opened up to one another. The short pale-haired man on the right never smiled and occasionally winced at all Sarkozy's bonhomie as he offered his critical advice to Russia. The wince grew to a frown when Sarko said that he had invited Dear Vladimir to make France his first foreign visit as ex-President next year. French and Russian journalists were not allowed to ask more than four pre-arranged questions, so it was hardly a news conference. 

Sarkozy the super-salesman delivered a more convincing performance this morning at the Bauman University, Russia's elite technology and engineering establishment. Fielding questions from a theatre full of students, he vaunted the merits of independent justice and a free press to a generation that has become suspicious of "western" democracy.

"Build a democratic society in Russia and the world will be grateful," he said. "The last 20 years of history have not spared you," he said, talking of the upheavals that came with the collapse of Soviet rule. "But it is important to understand this history and not try to avenge it."

There was some mockery and jeering when Sarkozy responded to a question about his shift towards the Americans. "I am a friend of the United States, but friend does not mean vassal," he said. "I have disagreements with the United States. The world cannot be ruled over by one power, even the main one."

In answer to a question about a Russian billionaire who was briefly detained by French police on prostitution charges last winter, Sarko seized the occasion to say that French judges were independent. "In my country, every branch of power is accountable and no-one is above the law. It is so much better to live in a democracy."

Putin was not there, but no doubt he was briefed on his new friend's swipes at his regime.

[Picture is Putin driving Sarko around his country house grounds in his Mercedes last night. There weren't so many smiles today]

Sarkozy's Midnight in Moscow

We know that Nicolas Sarkozy does not touch a drop of alcohol, so something else explained why his spirits were so high when he regaled us late last night on his dinner with Vladimir Putin.

Sarko was unstoppable as he held forth in a little room in the National,  the old Soviet hostelry, now transformed into luxury hotel, which is opposite the Kremlin and Red Square. In three hours at Putin's dacha, two minds had met as they surveyed the world and Russia's resurgence as a power, Sarko said. "It was a long, very long discussion. Enthralling, very intimate. I felt a real desire to exchange ideas and to understand."

Something seems to happen to Sarko when he meets Putin. It was after their first meeting, at the G8 sumit in Germany last June, that he acted like such an excited schoolboy that the video of "Drunk Sarko" became a Youtube hit.  The French president arrived in Moscow talking of Putin's "brutality" with Russian natural gas and warning how tough he would be with the uncooperative Kremlin.The cosy old Franco-Russian days were over and we would see what we would see, as the French say. Yet there he was overflowing with admiration for the soon-to-resign Tsar -- and claiming that he had won a big concession from him over policy on Iran's nuclear programme. Here's the newspaper story I wrote up after a long day and night in Moscow.

It seemed once again that Sarko was incredulous that he was playing world statesman, accepted as one of the big-boys, dans la cour des grands. Putin, he said, had confided in him his possible plans for staying on in power by becoming prime minister once he stands down as President next year. He had sounded him out on his own ideas for putting a two-term limit on France's five-year presidency. Putin is weighing the pros and cons of continuing power and he is extraordinarily lucid on the matter, said Sarkozy.

Sarko also said that he had been frank about his misgivings on Russia's treatment with internal dissent and its intolerance for homosexuals. Putin did not react badly, Sarko told me, because he had framed his remarks by stressing the world's admiration for Russia's revived power, saying that this could only be tarnished by less than impeccable conduct at home.

It is always fascinating to see Sarkozy up close like this. He was even joking that he had something in common with Putin because he had been chief of the French secret servie for four years -- as Interior Minister under Jacques Chirac. "What makes you think I'm an ordinary president?" he quipped to the group of reporters who had come from Paris to sit at his feet.  Chirac would never have made a crack like that. Nor would he have chatted so openly after a session with his good friend Vladimir. Sarko is really different.

Today, he has a chance to go public on his misgivings on human rights when he meets university students and then holds a press conference with Putin before lunch in the Kremlin. We shall see if the tone changes.

On a personal note, it's great to be back in the USSR... err, Russia, after all these years. For an old hand who lived here before the end of communism, it's still amazing to see the glitzy new, back-to-the-future Russia.  The new towers of Moscow, its showrooms of Bentley and Mercedes cars, its garish advertising, its commercial radio stations are still a novelty. Getting off the French Air Force Airbus at Vnukovo aerodrome, you are greeted by airline insignia with the Tsar's double-headed eagle. Someone who remembered only the hammers and sickles of Aeroflot has to pinch himself.

But things have not changed so much. They still stopped all the traffic on the motorway, pulling the mud-spattered cars and trucks to the side, to let our minivan convoy cruise into the city. And that was just for the media. Sarko arrived three hours later.   

   

France's incredible victory

There was joy in the air this morning when I jogged up the Avenue de la Grande Armée. France had just confounded everyone's expectations, including its own, and knocked New Zealand out of the world rugby cup. In the morning sunshine on the cafe terraces people were sharing their amazement over "the incredible victory". A gaggle of mournful New Zealanders were nursing their hangovers and joking about suicide. It was almost as if Paris was celebrating one of the Napoleonic victories inscribed on the Arc de Triomphe just up the street.

The 20-18 victory was so extraordinary because no-one had given France a chance against the invincible All Blacks. The players themselves sounded defeated in advance and comedians were joking all week about ambulance planes that would be flying back the French survivors from the massacre of Cardiff. Even at half time, with New Zealand 10 points ahead, they had started mourning in the bars around my home.

Then the old French flair suddenly revived and the team that became a national joke after going down to Argentina rose up and "committed history" as the TV commentator put it. Looking back, everyone said they could tell that a miracle was in the air after the French players faced down the All Blacks, eye-ball to eye-ball as they performed their Haka war dance before the start of play.

They danced in the streets all night in Paris, which was already staying up late to celebrate the "Nuit Blanche" -- Mayor Delanoe's annual all-night festival of arts. The exaltation was strongest in Toulouse, France's rugby capital. At four am there they were still singing On ira tous au paradis (We'll all go to heaven), an old pop hit that has become the rugby anthem. 

The newspapers ran out of superlatives today. "Gigantic!" said the headline in le Parisien. "This victory, which will go down in history without a doubt, has been given to us by a French side that has stunned the world."

It may be only a game -- and a quarter final at that -- but the victory is balm for the national soul. After all the talk of decline and the feeling that France has lost out and can't do things right any more, its team has beaten the favourites. It also helps that the sport was invented, and dominated for most of its history, by les Anglo-Saxons.

And of course we all know who will make sure he gets the credit: Nicolas Sarkozy. France's new number one rugby fan leaped out of his seat in the Cardiff stadium and danced at his team's first try. "This was a match for history," he told the players in the changing room after. "In 20 years people will say 'I was there'."  The implicit message was: "Under Sarko, France wins."

I'd prefer to see the epic victory as an illustration of the old saying, Impossible n'est pas français. But Sarko already purloined that for his campaign slogan last sping: "Tomorrow, everything becomes possible."

Next weekend France meets England in the semi-final. They are playing it modest today, sayng that it won't be a walk-over. But, after beating England in two friendlies just before the cup, France should make it to the last round. If they then manage to win, there will be no stopping the jubilation. 

Sarkozy's lady vanishes

Five months into the reign of King Sarko I, France seems to be running out of patience with the capricious behaviour of his consort. Rumour is raging in the royal court... I mean media. 

Cécilia Sarkozy, 49, has until lately been treated as a fascinating star, a romantic heroine with enigmatic ways, the new Jackie Kennedy and so on. The tide began turning in mid-August when she stood up George W Bush and his family, leaving her husband to offer a limp excuse about a sore throat. This week, she failed to turn up with him in in Bulgaria to visit the nurses whom she extracted from prison in Libya on her mission in July.

The celebrity media are still gushing about Cécilia la rebelle, femme indépendante but Sarko's subjects are not buying this any more. When Cécilia comes up in conversation, you hear sympathy for Sarkozy and disapproval over his incontrollable first lady. Irreverence towards la patronne (the boss), as Sarkozy calls his wife, is rampant on the internet and is now creeping into the mainstream press. Libération and Le Parisien both risked trouble this week by reporting rumours of  new turbulence in the Sarkozy household.

I wrote up the Cécilia saga in today's paper (click here to read). This will annoy my French colleagues who take a dim view of what they see as our tabloid fascination with the private lives of their rulers. Le Monde's weekly magazine devoted a whole column three weeks ago to mocking us for a piece I wrote on Ségolène Royal's search for a new partner. [Le Monde's site doesn't access its magazine so I can't link to it]

Since we went to press on Cécilia, some of today's French papers have taken another swipe. "Her priorities are her amours, her break-ups and her three chldren," said France Soir. "Tender and tough, passionate and calulating, she now stirs a sort of schizophrenia in the media," it said. The newpaper gave a fine display of this by both praising her as "icon of glossy magazines and woman of power" while also noting her unhealthy influence on the president.  "Cécilia is the one who chooses, expels or showers praise on those around her husband. Promotion for some and ejection for others, the first lady takes no prisoners." That's strong stuff by the standard of France's normally deferential newspapers.

French traditions bite the dust

 

One of the sure-fire themes for correspondents in Paris is the death of French institutions.

Generations of reporters have filled slack news days with dispatches on the demise of the great French café, the baguette, the béret, the concierge, the Gauloise sans filtre, the language, driving habits, the snail, the truffle, movie, cuisine, wine, couture, and so on. Next February, when tobacco is banned in all indoor public places, it will be time for "farewell to the smoke-filled cafe."

After ending "the era of", you can sometimes revive it. In recent years, this has applied to most of the above as pendulums have swung and fashions changed.  Even bérets enjoyed a return a few years back. The Gauloise and the nosey concierge have not returned and it's pretty unlikely that we will see smoky cafes again. Bad driving seems to be making a come-back, though.   

Sometimes it is sad to see a tradition disappear at a ministerial stroke. I wrote about a new one in the newspaper today -- the end of the car license plates that advertise where the owner lives. [Here's the story and a note to French readers: My cracks about regional traits were just humour anglaise].

There are sound arguments for centralising vehicle registration. It conforms to the European Union's push for a lifetime Vehicle Identification Number and also to President Sarkozy's campaign to shrink the bureaucracy and the public payroll. It will also mean less time waiting in queues at the prefecture to change la carte grise, the registration paper, when you move département.

But it takes away one of the little pleasures of French life. After a few years in France, you automatically scan the final two digits of cars around you, noting outsiders and sometimes guessing what distant province they might hail from. This probably doesn't make much sense to US, Australian or Canadian readers. They wouldn't replace distinctive state plates, with their slogans and boasts about sunshine, gardens and lone stars, with anonymous federal ones (I have always found Quebec's "Je me souviens" to be one of the most obscure).    

Le Parisien newspaper summed up the general French reaction nicely. "For many people, these number plates are one of those little things which are so anchored in our daily existence that we cannot imagine living without them."

[new anonymous French plate, though final version will probably be white]

[Proposal for a Brittany nationalist plate. BZH is short for Breizh -- Brittany in Breton. This is just wishful thinking]

  The top photo is a Paris 75 plate on a Citroen DS -- another bygone institution

Be British, Sarkozy tells France

Critics of Nicolas Sarkozy like to mock his friendliness towards George W Bush by saying that he is cosying up to a US president who is discredited at home. Uncharitably, the same might be said of the French President's extraordinary admiration for Tony Blair. 

It is only beginning to dawn on France just how much Super-Sarko is modelling his administration and reform ideas on the methods of the last British Prime Minister and his New Labour team. Overtly borrowing from Britain is a big break from the old French view that the only acceptable "models" for France were socially worthy nations such as Sweden, Denmark, Germany, and Canada.   

Sarko, a radical rightist, has long been a big fan of Blair, the Third Way leftist, seeing him as a pragmatic action-man who solved unemployment and fostered new prosperity. He established a complicity with Blair after he became minister in 2002. In his campaign, he borrowed as his motto, Blair's formula that "what counts is what works".