Every French person knows that. Only awkward English-speakers think it starts in January. The year really begins on the first Monday of September. This is when Parisians get back to their desks after their month-long holiday and begin working out where they'll go for the mid-term break in November. It's also when every French project, from a new hairdo to a nuclear power station, gets under way, which is why, at 9am on the first Monday of September, I was standing a hundred yards from the Champs-Elysées watching people kissing. My good friend Chris told me not to come to France. Great lifestyle, he said, great food, and totally un-politically correct women with great underwear. But, he warned me, the French are hell to live with. He worked in the London office of a French bank for three years. "They made all us Brits redundant the day after the French football team got knocked out of the World Cup.
