Plus ça change

It's said that the English always talk about the weather, but it's equally true of the locals in rural France. After all, many of them are dependent for their livelihoods on the weather. This time last year, talk was of the coldest winter in most people's memory, now it's the balmiest. The bulbs are up (some flowering) and several birds are building nests. The birds have hardly touched the seed and fat that I put out for them in December.

English children are taught that Napoleon derided the English as a nation of shopkeepers (although he pinched the tag from a Scotsman, Adam Smith). Today, the English have succumbed to the American big box retail revolution, and it is France that protects small shopkeepers by retail price maintenance and regulation of markdowns. The winter sales started here last Wednesday: after six weeks, the old price tags have to go back on unsold items. We will be allowed a summer sales period too, when the préfectures think it's appropriate. In the intervening weeks, prices are fixed in most shops that are not claiming to be going out of business or remodelling.