In the second quarter of this year, France’s GDP contracted by 0.3%. In other words along with her other seemingly unshakeable economic woes (public deficit, external trade, now rising unemployment, falling manufacturing output) we now have to add the risk of recession.

As politicians keep assuring us, recession is only a word. Perhaps. Yet during those heady days of the presidential election, growth was to be France’s cure-all. “Growth?” said candidate Sarkozy. “I’ll go and grab it with my teeth if I have to.” As growth slips into the negative perhaps he should look out a new set.

All the while this trouble has been slowly coming to the boil the French government has repeatedly insisted nothing is wrong, that like a well-tended garden France is growing well. A year ago almost to the day, as the effects of the subprime crisis were being felt in all the Western countries, as the Northern Rock foundered in Britain and the ECB poured an unprecedented 320 billion euro into the banking system, the French Minister of Economics, the very intelligent and experienced Christine Lagarde, told us not to worry: “we have the basis of a dynamic growth, since France’s international environment is going in the right direction” As Mediapart’s journalists say “France’s leaders gave the impression that the French economy was not connected to the rest of the world.”

There are obvious parallels with a very different situation in 1986 when the nuclear reactor at Chernobyl exploded. As the nuclear cloud was blown westwards across Europe, even as the Germans next door were passing emergency measures prohibiting the sale of certain fresh foods, the French authorities insisted that nothing was wrong since the frontiers of France were being protected against radio-active fall-out by an anticyclone from the Azores. More than a week after the explosion the Min. of Ag. announced that “French territory has been entirely spared from nuclear fall-out”. Both these statements turned out to be tragically false and the French authorities since have been publicly castigated for misleading the public.

The fact that for the past year the French authorities have once again been telling us that nothing is wrong, even as France’s neighbours take measures to avoid the worst effects of the economic crisis, is important for two reasons. The great majority of economic statistics mean nothing to most people – there is however one that truly matters, and that is whether the hard cash they themselves earn enables them to live to a standard to which they have become accustomed. There are always enough toady experts on hand to assure us that disastrous-sounding figures are meaningless, but when voters look at the plate in front of them and wonder why there’s less on it, or have to admit to the neighbour that they can’t afford the same holiday they had last year, then politicians need to watch out.

The second reason is that for generations now the French voter has grumbled that politicians are out of touch with reality. Formed in the grandes and elitist écoles, dining in three-star restaurants, paid as civil servants win or lose an election, they have been seen (and have seen themselves) as a bande à part. Nicolas Sarkozy vowed to change all that. And indeed did, for a while, rushing about as a Minister checking out the rumbles of discontent in the boulangeries of France. That seems to be over. Now his puppet prime minister, emerging from a hastily-convened crisis meeting, tells the press there is no crisis, it will be reforms as usual and that a “plan de relance  is neither possible, desirable nor effective”. As the French public debt inevitably increases, members of the Economic and Financial Affairs Commission of the European Commission must be holding their breath to see how the French government tries to explain it away this time.

Indeed interest repayments on its annual debt have blossomed with inflation and this year the Ministry of the Economy estimates they will cost the nation around 60 billion euro - just to service the debt. That’s a little more than the entire education budget (excluding universities). For months we (and the European Commission) have been assured that France’s dynamic growth will get us out of the fix - but as quarterly growth slips into the negative that myth has been blown: in January of this year the Minister of the Economy promised an annual growth of 2.5%. Less than four months later that had slipped to between 2 and 1.7%. Now in mid-August INSEE’s estimate has fallen to 0.6%. That is a big drop in less than eight months. Still, as the government keeps telling us,nothing to get excited about, after all, since “the coffers are empty” what can they do? Gallic shrug.

“Why are we here? It is because here we play a part in the freedom of the world.” With statements like this one President Sarkozy is digging himself deeper into Afghanistan, making it more and more difficult for the French troops to withdraw with honour - for we all know that a faith-based army such as the Taliban can never be defeated in the clear-cut military sense.

But even as Sarkozy spoke those words yesterday his “friend and ally” Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, arrived in Moscow to sign an arms deal with the Russians. The same Russians who are daily increasing M. Sarkozy’s international humiliation for prematurely braying he had brokered peace on the frayed edges of Europe. Only five weeks ago President al-Assad was standing shoulder to shoulder with the French President watching the the French army parade down the Champs Elysée. A massive “media coup” that had taken months to set up. Now, even as Russia snubs the Sarkozy-led Europe by dictating its own terms in Georgia, Syria snubs Sarkozy by showing just where his real allegiance lies and his money will go.

It is the second time during his short presidency that Sarkozy has been snubbed by Syria. Others had warned him, but one of Sarkozy’s enduring (perhaps endearing?) characteristics is that he is convinced he can succeed where others have failed. If France, with its “246 varieties of cheese”, is notoriously difficult to govern, he will find it is nevertheless easier than dabbling in international politics.

Maybe he already knows this, for it is interesting that at this time he should be considering replacing his Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner with that 2003 star of the UN Dominique de Villepin. He apparently told de Villepin that “It’s not with Kouchner that we’re going to make la grande politique internationale“. But on present form it’s not with Sarkozy either.

If there is to be a permanent President of Europe, as the Lisbon Treaty demands, the French are adamant that the job shall not go to Tony Blair, simply because he sent his military into Iraq, a cardinal sin. How ironic therefore if Nicolas Sarkozy, as rotating President of Europe, were obliged to commit French troops to Georgia. Not of course to fight the Russians but in an attempt to keep the Russians to the cease-fire they signed last week. I wonder what the French would make of that – especially as today ten French soldiers from the controversial new force committed by Sarkozy only a few weeks ago, were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan. We have yet to see how France reacts to this latest news – but the returning body-bags will a tough one for Sarkozy, coming on the heels of his brokered cease-fire that hasn’t exactly filled the front-pages with the eulogies he hoped for in his first major international diplomatic effort, and of increasing economic woes at home.

Commentators have said recently that what Sarkozy and his shrinking polls desperately needs is that Thatcher Moment – referring of course to the Falklands War. The 1982 Argentinean invasion of those bleak islands handed her the opportunity to establish herself as a woman of substance, the armed forces’ victory giving her the popularity at home to bring in all those economic and social reforms which she had not dared do before. Did the Russian invasion of Georgia create similar hopes inside Sarkozy’s head? If so he should look at a map: the Argentineans invaded South Georgia, the Russians Georgia and South Ossetia.

Talking about garbling words, the way French commentators pronounce the town Tbilisi sounds as if they are saying the BBC. I was deeply alarmed the other morning to hear that the Russians had shelled the BBC. I imagined White City, where I spent 20 years of my life, in ruins. No such luck.

Now I’ll get back to thinking about those “increasing economic woes at home”.

Two gems thrown up at the weekend:

“Politics is show-business for the ugly” A perfectly apt definition if you look at many of today’s European leaders.

Secondly, in an email a friend wrote the following: “Brown and Sarkozy both remind me of the man who used to run the epicerie in the little village in the Vaucluse when we first arrived there. A locksmith (I think) by trade he had always longed to run a village shop. When he achieved his life’s ambition he seemed to have no idea what to do and made a complete hash of it…….”

Both speak volumes and need no commentary

People sometimes ask me why on earth I am so interested in French politics, implying they must be as boring as the Anglo-Saxon variety. In many ways they can be, but I became interested in French politics through the extraordinary, grotesque, almost Shakespearian character of certain French politicians. Take, because it’s August and you’ve got not better to do, Bernard Tapie. A has-been, many people say (or said until a couple of weeks ago). Not a bit of it – or indeed, so what if he is: Shakespeare based one of his best plays round a has-been, King Lear.

A couple of weeks ago, aged 65 (perhaps Lear’s age?) Bernard Tapie, a former Socialist minister, was handed some 40 million euros. By today’s standards that’s not huge wealth, but the particularity of this money is that it, and a very great deal more, has to be paid by all of us living in France. In total Tapie has just been awarded 295 million euro by an arbitration tribunal, with interest that goes up to an estimated 400 million, a figure confirmed by the Ministry of Finance. Why the Ministry of Finance? Oh, because it is they who will make out the cheque. The money, awarded because of the irregularities of the Credit Lyonnais bank, will be paid out of our taxes. As a comparison that’s more money going to an individual than to all the military towns put together affected by the dissolution of various regiments under Sarkozy’s recent defence cuts. And their compensation is spread over 6 years, Tapie gets his in fewer months.

He was awarded 295 million but he owes 250 million in back-taxes and other debts – so that’s where the figure of 40 million comes from. As for the interest payments (an estimated extra 105 million), that’s all very flou.

What is not flou at all is the sense of public outrage, and for several reasons. But first of all, who is this man, this past and future politician? A household name in France but virtually unknown outside. Like Sarkozy, Mitterrand, Chirac, Pasqua, Dumas and others he is unlike any British or American politician I can think of (Nixon, perhaps?). Margaret Thatcher and even Tony Blair were not, I don’t think, so cynical nor so colourful, so utterly lacking in souciance about feathering their own nests, so hypnotized by the prospect of power and its glittering trappings.

Born in 1943 in a working-class area of Paris, Tapie began his career as a car salesman (shades of Nixon, the “used-car salesman”?), graduating to selling televisions, both, in the early 1960’s, decidedly bling-bling objects. Then he became a pop singer, well, more of a crooner really. He made the natural step up into business and began buying companies, very much an Anglo-Saxon habit at the time. Amongst others he bought La Vie Claire which sponsored a highly successful bicycle racing team. He bought into Olympic Marseille, a football team which under his presidency also became very successful, developing some of France’s best players of the 1980’s and 90’s. In 1995 he was sent down for eight months for fixing a match, paying the other team not to play too hard or to deliberately injure his men since they had a difficult UEFA Cup match against AC Milan shortly afterwards.

But in the meantime he had become first a député (1989-1995), then minister of urban affairs (1992-1993) under François Mitterrand. This gave him certain standing, prestige and of course protection, particularly over his debts. For in 1990 he had bought Adidas. He didn’t use his own money but borrowed from the Crédit Lyonnais, then a nationalized bank. Within two years he had a debt of one billion francs. That same year Mitterrand, who adored him, made him a minister, it being understood that a nationalized bank will not hassle a government minister, even if it is for a billion francs.

Some people might raise an eyebrow at a Socialist minister wheeling and dealing as Tapie did, but not the working class left-wing in France, for whom Tapie was a hero if not a god. He was a very popular populist politician, self-made, abrasive, ebullient, womanizing, football and bicycle-mad: genuinely one of the boys (as Sarkozy tries so hard to be), so very different from Hollande and/or Royal.

But the debts kept mounting, so Tapie asked the Credit Lyonnais to sell Adidas for him. The company was not doing well and there were few offers. Finally Robert Louis-Dreyfus expressed an interest, but not at the asking price (anyone who has read Carmen Callil’s excellent “Bad Faith”, a biography of Louis Darquier, may remember Louis Louis-Dreyfus, the highly successful businessman with his fleet of ships etc. Robert is either son or nephew). In the end Robert Louis-Dreyfus bought Adidas off Tapie for a good price, then shortly afterwards floated the company on the stock exchange for at least double. Tapie was outraged, feeling he had been cheated by the Crédit Lyonnais whom he accused of deliberately under-valuing Adidas. In fact they had bought part of Adidas themselves at the knock-down price and then profited from the floatation.

That was back in 1995 and the case was only cleared away last month. All along it’s been a messy business, but the most shocking was the final part. In 2005 the Appeal Court awarded Tapie 135 million euro. A year later the Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) overturned this decision, in the same breath sending the case back to the Appeal Court to think again. From somewhere came the idea of going instead to an arbitration tribunal – that is out of the Courts’ jurisdiction altogether and into a world reserved for private or international companies to resolve their differences. No part of the French state apparatus had ever used this kind of arbitration tribunal. Some say the idea was suggested by the Minister of Finance’s cabinet director, who happens to be a close friend of Sarkozy (who indeed used to employ Sarkozy when the latter was a lawyer). Others that Tapie decided in January 2007, coincidentally just as Sarkozy was beginning his election campaign. Certainly soon after that Tapie, still a member of the Parti Radical de Gauche despite his wheeling and dealing, publicly backed Sarkozy’s presidency and in return Sarkozy is said to have promised to “get Tapie out of this mess.”

Their friendship goes back a long way: back in 1995 prime minister Edouard Balladur was going to stand in the presidential elections and Sarkozy was his main man. Balladur, on the right, was terrified that Jacques Delors, on the left, would stand against him, so Sarkozy was sent to make a deal with Delors’ fellow-Socialist, Bernard Tapie: ‘if Delors stands, you stand too, to reduce his votes in the first round. In the second round you then change your party, transfer your support to Balladur and we’ll see you right afterwards’. 2007 was not the first time Sarkozy had played the ouverture card, picking up members of the opposition for his own government. But in 1995 it came to nothing because Delors didn’t stand, Chirac beat Balladur and Sarkozy was thrown to the wolves. But they have remained friends, they are similar in some ways: both are populist politicians, both are self-made, both advocate “straight-talking” (i.e. using the gros mots of ordinary Frenchmen), both adore Rolex watches, big houses and fast cars. Both have high opinions of themselves.

So for reasons that remain unclear, it was decided to go to “private” arbitration: a first for a French government in this type of case. The controversial decision was justified by Madame Lagarde, Finance Minister, because, she said, the case had dragged on too long: through 3 presidents, 6 prime ministers and 13 finance ministers. Three judges were appointed, one by Tapie, one by the Credit Lyonnais and one for luck. Each was paid 300,000 euro for their work. The tribunal was held in camera, no full transcript has emerged, not even of the final judgement. All we know is that the judges found the Crédit Lyonnais had been at fault firstly for “not respecting the obligation to show loyalty to a client using them as an agent to sell property” and secondly for buying part of the company Tapie was selling through them, something again banks are forbidden to do, abusing, presumably, inside information. Thus for these two errors 293.4 million euro plus interest. But of public money. Thus, as you will have worked out by now, those of us paying French taxes are the ones who have to pay for Bernard Tapie’s back-taxes and debts.

Many people made an outcry. The Socialist party was rather quiet (but then it usually is) because Tapie was a former Socialist Minister and the less said about Mitterrand’s reign the better, as far as they are concerned. The most coherent criticism has come from a man I respect and like enormously, Charles de Courson, who was one of two parliamentarians (one from each house) sitting on the 5-person board of the EPFR, the state-run over-seer of that part of the Crédit Lyonnais which, from the outset, had been at the heart of the dispute with Tapie. Charles de Courson was always against the idea of going to arbitration, this privatization of Justice. He hoped his fellow parliamentarian, the senator Roland de Luart, would agree with him so together they could squash it. However De Luart announced to the EPFR board that he had received a telephone call “from high places” (it was never clear whether he meant the Elysée or the Finance Ministry), informing him that those in power preferred arbitration. Courson, realising he’d lost the main argument, nevertheless insisted that whatever decision the arbitration judges eventually reached, it must be in line with the one handed down by the Cour de cassation (Supreme Court), which had overturned the Appeal Court’s compensation of 135 million. Apparently this was agreed. But in the event the arbitration judges not only ignored the Cour de cassation entirely, they doubled the amount of money proposed by the Appeal Court. Courson says that this is because the arbitration judges “wrongly” calculated the value of Adidas at its flattering floatation level and not at the correct level, when Tapie sold it. This shifting of the value date doubled the amount Tapie was awarded.

However it is also clear to cynics like myself that if Tapie had only been given 135 million euro he could not have paid off his back taxes (190 million) let alone the other 60 million he owed to others. Thus had he only been given 135 million he would have ranted on for another ten years. You can see that the state was anxious simply to get rid of this affair, but the only way to shut Tapie up was to give him what he wanted – whether that was just or not. There may also be more to it: there is a strong feeling that Bernard Tapie, popular as he still is, may be invited back into government, but this business had to be cleared up first.

Immediately after the judgement, Charles de Courson said the appalling decisions of the arbitration tribunal should be over-turned by the government. The government indeed had three weeks in which they could do this. But on the 28th July, with the smell of the seaside already in their nostrils and knowing that most of their compatriots, already on the beach, had switched off, they announced that the decision will stand. Tapie will get at least 40 million as well, doubtless, as a large part of the 100 million interest. Out of the tax-payer’s purse.

Finally, to add a bit of colour to the man, two brief illustrations of Tapie’s character: on the 29th June 1994 the gendarmes descended on his hôtel particulier to arrest him on charges connected with the huge luxury yacht which he seemed to be using for his own, private purposes even though it was paid for by the burghers of Marseille. They swooped at dawn, of course, and he was in bed, naked, of course. After the usual reaction (“petits cons, ânes bâtés, et c’est la moitié de ce que je pense. Je me souviendrai de vos têtes, tous sans exception….” according to the later court transcript) he agreed to be taken to face the examining magistrate, but refused to get dressed. Proud of his physique, striding around his house without a stitch ordering then eating his breakfast, he insisted he be taken as he was to face Madame la Juge, the then-darling of the press, Eva Joly. “She comes looking for me at 6.00 o’clock, the tart (la salope). Well, she can see me naked!” It took his own lawyer 5 hours to persuade him to at least cover his vitals. I find it hard to imagine any UK or American cabinet minister having that amount of savoir faire.

The other story also concerns his vast and beautifully furnished hôtel particulier, one of the most expensive residences in Paris. During Tapie’s bankruptcy proceedings the court put a hold on the property so that it could not be sold. That was 14 years ago, and ever since it has been a virtual property of the state. Yet all that time Tapie has continued living there, for nothing. The rates are paid by Les Amis de Bernard Tapie. The director of the Crédit Lyonnais, hearing that it was furnished more lavishly than any palace (Tapie was said to have bought every available piece of Louis XV furniture, plus countless paintings), and wanting some of the debt re-paid, asked the courts to send in the bailiffs. The night before they arrived two enormous vans were parked in the front yard of the building. Later one was stopped: it was full of furniture. The other has never been seen since.

“Tim - truly sorry to hear of your dreadful experience of the French health service. (And indeed of the dog.),” wrote Rockinred. “Like you, I have relatives and many friends who are current or retired UK NHS professionals, all of them hard working and dedicated; and like you, I rather think that the UK NHS has become an easy Aunt Sally. However, my own experiences of the French system are completely at odds with yours - on various occasions in recent years, from emergency trips to the local urgences, to GP advice, to friendly help from the pharmaciste right through to serious surgery, every experience - and that of my family too - has been exemplary. Timely, attentive, utterly professional care, delivered with great consideration and good humour; I’ve never been humiliated, spoken to officiously or made to wait in line unnecessarily (maybe the odd bit of old-fashioned starchiness from senior doctors, but I must confess I quite like that). Hospital stays have actually been a pleasure - comfortable, with good food (yes, even a wine list…and that was just the local regular hozzie, not a grand clinic). And talk about clean. Above all, there’s a real feeling that you’re being looked after. And despite being suspicious of folk tales about the NHS, what my health professional friends tell me doesn’t match up to what France - in my experience - delivers; they’d love to be able to - but they can’t.”

I’ve decided to weave two comments about the previous post into this one, as an after-word. They are quite different, but I agree with both and they helped me clarify my thoughts (a blog after all is not an article, written at some speed with inevitable ommissions).  Like Rockinred, my experience of French hospitals, doctors and chemists has been more than good. What I was trying to say in the previous post concerned the system more than the effort and skill of medical practitioners. It’s the system, after all, which is said to be the best in the world, just as it’s the system in Britain which is said to have collapsed.

Several years ago I interviewed the ward manager who had looked after me in the local hospital (the same as the one I went to on Monday): she acknowledged my praise but said that in her view the current level of care could not last. She said that within a few years there would be almost no GP’s in rural France, dangerously few nurses, physios, mid-wives or other health workers working in the community and that these local hospitals would no longer exist, adding that by the time people of our generation were getting shaky on our pins, living in the countryside would once again be a risky business. On Monday her prophetic words kept coming back to me.

“Sorry to hear about this. I hope the dog is OK,” writes ange scalpel. “What this shows has to do not simply with the French health system (have you tried “les urgences” in a metropolitan hospital on a Friday evening ? I have) , but also to a resilient feature of the French life: in August almost everything is closed. It’s not only hospitals, doctors, pharmacies, shops but also the administrations, etc which are closed in August. Remember the heatwave of 2003. More than 15 000 people died in large part because everything was closed down, except perhaps undertakers. When the “ministre de la santé”, M. Matei gave his famous interview on the TV to the effect that everything was under control, he was filmed in the garden of his holiday home.”

I think the system is the root cause of the problem: it’s the system which allows too many medical staff to take their holidays during the same month, which allows pharmacies to close on Mondays, as though the body somehow only breaks down Tuesday to Saturday. Similarly it is the system which allows newly graduated GP’s to decide where they want to work (in the sun and by the sea), whereas teachers do not have the same choice. The complacency which tolerates pharmacies not opening on Mondays seems to me an example of the stasis of a system believed to be the best.

Now a question: whenever ange scalpel sends in a (very welcome) comment someone sends in another (semi-obscene and very aggressive), blindly lashing out at him. I don’t publish them since they do not contribute to what Prospect Magazine calls “intelligent conversation” – but I would love to know why ange scalpel (who has always seemed to me an entirely reasonable, articulate and intelligent person) arouses such passion.

Finally thank you to the many readers who sent in messages of sympathy for the dog (and to me). As a matter of detail, both veterinary surgeries in our area work Mondays.

Perhaps, as people keep telling me, the French health system is “the best in the world”. A week ago I was discussing this with a near-neighbour, the directrice of our local primary school, while my son was taking maths coaching from her 19 year old daughter. She said how grateful she was to be French and not have to live with “the dreadful English health system”. That very common French judgement of the British system always rankles because I have family who have spent their lives working more than conscientiously in the NHS, I have close friends who depend on British medicine for continuing care and who have nothing but praise for it – and I know that usually the person criticising the NHS has never been to Britain. But I say nothing.

Anyway, yesterday, a week after our conversation, the same near-neighbour’s Alsatian decided to try to remove my right arm, giving me the unexpected excuse to test whether she was right in her unstinting praise of the French health system. (The unfortunate dog, I would add, knew me quite well: an hour before I had been ruffling its ears and giving it one of those manly pats one gives huge dogs that bark a lot but seem quite reasonable behind the barred teeth).

I had left my son to his maths coaching (patting the dog), done some shopping and was returning to collect him. The dog barked, as it always does, then for some reason flew at me and sank its teeth into my arm before setting about the rest of me in a state of total and tearing canine fury. The young maths teacher (alone in the house), unable to control the beast became terribly upset. Anyway, once I had finally persuaded the enraged animal to leave off attacking me and go back into the house, I told her not to worry even though the hole made by the dog’s teeth is impressive and goes down, as far as I could tell, to the bone. I assured her the best thing was for me to pop straight to the local GP and get some antibiotics. A simple enough operation, I idealistically thought.

Bleeding, though not profusely, the arm considerably swollen and painful, I managed to drive to the GP. It was 11.00 a.m. Though I rang then banged on the surgery door with my good arm there was no answer. The other GP in town recently left the business: aged 50 he says he is exhausted by working 7 days a week all hours and wants to enjoy a little bit of his life. His job has been advertised for over 6 months: there have been few candidates and all fled when they saw the work-load. Nobody wants to be a rural doctor anymore, despite the good earnings. Consequently my GP now has to cope with a population of some 3,000 over an area of 300 square kilometres (112 square miles).

Since he was not in his surgery (health centres in the English sense, with several doctors, nursing staff and receptionists under one roof are catching on very slowly in France), my only alternative was to drive to the nearest hospital half an hour away, with my rather shaken son. With paper handkerchiefs we had managed to staunch the bleeding a bit, but my jeans and now the inside of the car were covered with blood. Driving was difficult.

Not unnaturally when I got to the hospital there was nowhere to park so I took one of the places reserved for doctors. Given the blood on the car-seat I thought they would understand. Later I was told this was worse than sacrilege and it would have been better to double-park and block the entrance than to presume to take a doctor’s parking space. But then it’s August and 90% of the medical staff, as I discovered, are on holiday – thus the period when this very beautiful area is bursting with summer visitors and every commerce is working over-time to earn a little money is also the period when there are fewest doctors.

I went, swollen arm dripping blood, to reception and asked the way to les urgences. The woman behind the desk was busy and recited mantra-like what is clearly an inviolable administrative réglementation: “Any person or persons capable of standing will wait on the red line until such time as the necessary documentation has been filled-in and processed.” So I stood on the red line, which my blood was making redder, waiting. When finally my turn came the woman’s phone (she doubled as switchboard operator) rang persistently (she swore every time as if it was outrageous that anyone should phone the hospital) so I lost another five minutes.

Luckily I had my green computerized Carte Vitale on me which proves I am fully paid-up and in the system, but nowadays the basic (but nevertheless high) monthly health payments don’t cover costs, so what used to be a voluntary top-up system, the mutuelle, is now virtually obligatory. She held out her hand for my mutuelle card. She looked at it and tossed it back, saying it was out of date. She implied I was going to have to get that sorted before I could see a doctor. I said rather feebly that at least it proved I had the supplementary mutuelle cover “Not at all,” she retorted. But, I continued, it did give her the name and phone number of the mutuelle as well as my customer number – could she not telephone them? She replied something to the effect that she was too busy for that (and indeed she was rarely off the switchboard). So we sat there while she typed up a document so lengthy I wondered what on earth she was finding to say about me. Finally the printer spewed it out and she gave me a sheaf of papers telling me to go to the first floor A&E. As I got up I apologised for the amount of blood I had left on her desk. She looked at me curiously, leant across the desk and sank back with a horrified “Mon Dieu!”

In A&E there was the inevitable queue. The staff were severely harassed – they told this to my wife, a nursing manager, when she phoned. Some people when harassed rush about trying to get twice as much done. This team (doctor and two nurses) took the opposite tack and moved very slowly and deliberately, leaning back against the wall when they spoke to you as if literally on their last legs: in fact I was told later they had been on duty since 6.00 a.m. (it was then 1.00 p.m.). The nurse said she would get some disinfectant for my arm and told me to take my place in the queue. An hour and a half later the doctor saw me. He said he wouldn’t stitch up the hole in my arm since it was full of canine infection that had to be allowed to come out. “What,” he asked, “was the state of the dog’s vaccines?” I didn’t know. He decided it wasn’t worth an X-ray nor a blood test. He prescribed some antibiotics, which was the reason I had come there in the first place, then handed me the wrong prescription. Once we had sorted out that confusion he told me to start the course of antibiotics as soon as I could. I did not reply that was exactly what I had been trying to do for the past two and a half hours.

However, when I left the hospital finally armed with my prescription I discovered that all the local chemists were closed all day (it was Monday, after all) and I had to drive to another town for the pharmacie de garde.  When I got there I was in luck since most unusually the chemist would re-open at 2.30: normally it was 3.30. I grabbed something to eat with my very patient son and waited.

When finally the moment came to get my antibiotics, the chemist had difficulty believing this English person could actually be part of the French system, despite my computerized green card giving her all my details. She wanted me to confirm my address, phone number, date of birth (which she clearly had on the screen before her) and provide some form of ID. It may be that she is one of many who blame part of the French medical over-spend on the English who come over and “abuse” the system for better treatment.

I make no value judgements on my experience. Possibly in Britain it would have been worse, certainly it would have been different. Quite possibly the French health system is the best in the world. But after all that’s only relative: it doesn’t mean it’s beyond improvement – or even that it’s good. One of the virtues (and there are several) of the NHS is that being heavily and constantly criticised it constantly evolves. A system that is universally over-praised like the French health system risks becoming locked into self-congratulory stasis. Or at least that’s how it struck me yesterday.