Mon derrière; semble t il grand dans cela?

Using any excuse that springs to mind - work, prior commitments, beri-beri – frankly, whatever achieves the desired end - you may escape being dragged to the pre Christmas sales. However, undaunted by your lack of enthusiasm, your (much) better half, bright eyed and purse in hand will inexorably be drawn towards the nearest retail park. If you’re used to shopping elsewhere in Europe, then sales discounts won’t seem a big deal, but nos amis Francais – favouring as they do the ‘buy one get none free’ mantra, have a rather more old fashioned approach to their soldes -the nett effect being that all stores are obliged to hold their sales at the same time and then only for a handful of weeks a year.

Hence then, early one November morning, the furtive crunch of madam’s car down the drive. The hours till the boss’s return can be spent in blissful ignorance of your joint account being emptied faster than a 747’s fuel tanks on take-off, but come dusk the time for denial is past. Expensive looking carrier bags now cover every inch of the dining room table and it’s time for the fashion show. And here a word or two of warning; as the world over, you’ll be expected to ooh and aah at appropriate moments and compliment on the figure huggingness / suitability of every single thing. Unfortunately though, the French clothes labeling system was designed by a committee of innumerate pensioners who, happy in their pom pom slippers and voluminous house coats, lost interest after about five minutes. Thus a size ‘12’ in one store will bear no relation to that in another - and don’t even start on French ‘S’, ‘M’ and ‘L’ tags – all of which are specifically designed to depress any woman of over 8 stone and force them to opt for the dreaded next size up (or jump off the nearest bridge).

So bear all the above in mind whilst alongside the impromptu kitchen cat-walk and pay close attention. And even if your diplomatic skills fail when you answer in the affirmative to the dreaded ‘does my bum look big in this’ question (and the conversation turns down the blind ‘why-don’t-you-find-someone-skinnier-then-as if-they’d-have-you-anyway’ alley), remember that all the sales assistants have said that it doesn’t. And being French, they’re bound to be right.