Valérie Trierweiler resurfaces - Amber alert averted

Oh but it has been an anxious couple of weeks for the French and in particular the country's media.

Because ever since the infamous Seggers Twittergate affair little has been heard and virtually nothing seen of Valérie Trierweiler.

First up her page on the official site of the French president's office went "whoosh" as it disappeared.

And then the woman herself dropped "discreetly out of view" as Elle magazine (well, what did you expect? Le Monde as a source?) headlined.

She wasn't, as Le Parisien (yes another admirable source. On a roll) pointed out, in London with François Hollande as he sipped tea with Mrs Windsor and shared a carpet joke or two with David Cameron.

And apart from her Mills and Boon-type contribution to a behind-the-scenes look in a book about Hollande's presidential campaign (she wrote the treacly text to accompany Stéphane Ruet's photos) not a squeak or a peep had been heard of her for nearly a month.

Worrying times indeed.

Heck even the international media was concerned with the Italian daily Corriere della sera getting in on the act and reporting that Trierweiler had vanished.

It was all too much.

A country firstladyless and desperate for news of its number one journalist.

Rumours - as they always do in such cases - began circulating.

Some maintained Trierweiler had been seen, rag in hand and scarf tied around head to protect her lustrous mane, cleaning the windows of the Elysée palace. Penance for bad behaviour?

Others insisted she had been sent away on a retreat to contemplate her navel, work out a strategy for making amends and think about what a naughty, naughty woman she had been.

But apart from unsubstantiated gossip, her real whereabouts remained a mystery.

"Where was she?" was the anxious yet silent cry that could be heard not just in France, but around the world.

It was almost enough to launch an Amber alert, don't you think?

Well, the answer can now be revealed.

(Drum roll please)

Calais.

Valérie Trierweiler makes the front page of local daily Nord littoral)

As the local daily (hey, she clearly knows how to make the news) Nord Littoral reported in its Tuesday edition, Trierweiler was seen...wait for it...drinking coffee in a café last week in Coulogne, a suburb of the northern French town of Calais.

She had apparently been visiting a centre for handicapped children run by the partner of a soldier killed while on duty in Afghanistan in June.

And the details of her reappearance were oh so very far removed from the juicy ones the French have all come to love and expect in the short time she has been their first thingamajig.

She reportedly brought her own food - very normal, don't you think?

The national media hadn't been informed ahead of time and in fact the centre only discovered Trierweiler would be paying a flying visit half an hour before she turned up.

The gentlest of gentle reintroductions to get her back into the swing of things with the feeling that the nation can now give a collective sigh of relief that Trierweiler is ready for a comeback deserving of her status.

And that'll be at the weekend when she appears at Hollande's side during France's annual display of military might and pride at the Bastille parade in Paris on Saturday.

And then it's off to Avignon for a spot of culture (her newly-discovered speciality at Paris Match, the international weekly news magazine for which she works) at the city's festival.

Relief indeed.

The French will be able to  sleep more soundly in their beds at night.

Welcome back.

Nicolas Sarkozy's tribute to "Stéphane" Camus

Ah the French president (but for how much longer?) Nicolas Sarkozy makes himself such an easy target for opponents when it comes to a slip of the tongue in an effort to show how well read he is and how much he appreciates and understands culture.

Le lapsus de Nicolas Sarkozy qui enflamme le net Vidéo jeanmarcmorandini sélectionnée dans Replay TV

On Monday he appeared at a rally in the French city of Avignon and in front of thousands of supporters came up with a reference that, for a moment at least, seemed to puzzle and confuse those attending.

A smiling Sarkozy wanted to tell the assembled throng how happy he was to be there in a region which was also the burial place of one of the country's greatest 20th century writers,  the late Albert Camus.

The winner of the 1957 Nobel prize for literature lived and is buried in Lourmarin, a village at the foot of the Luberon Massif just over 60 kilometres away from Avignon.

So perhaps it wasn't unexpected that Sarkozy would want to make reference to such a monumental figure of French culture to show how in touch he was with the area.

Except it didn't quite come out the way Sarkozy intended as he expressed how happy he was to be there.

"It's always a pleasure for me to come here," he said.

"I feel - how can I say - really Mediterranean," he continued.

"I don't know why. It's perhaps (wait for it) STÉPHANE Camus."

Er.

Of course it didn't take long for the blunder to be picked up by those with a malicious sense of humour, and in particular on Twitter, as comments came thick and fast.

The references to one of Camus' most famous work L’Étranger (The Stranger or The Outsider, which also translates from French to English as the foreigner) were among the most frequent with, "Stéphane Camus, isn't he the one who wanted to give foreigners the right to vote?" and "I've re-read the Immigrant by Stéphane Camus. It's really good."

Oh well. Let's hope there aren't too many other cultural references from Sarkozy during the televised debate with his Socialist party rival François Hollande on Wednesday evening.

(Really) Petty theft - grounds for suspension?

Hot on the heels of a French supermarket which backed down after threatening to sack an employee for "stealing" from a rubbish bin, comes an incident of a similar nature.

USB key (from Wikipedia, author Usb-thumb-drive.jpg: Evan-Amos)

This time around it concerns a store from one of the country's largest chains and a name known throughout many parts of the world, Carrefour.

As reported in the regional daily Le Dauphine Libéré, management at one of its stores just outside of the southern French city of Avignon has suspended two employees for, as the paper headlines the story "stealing a couple of pens and some chewing gum."

Now while that might tell part of the story and give the impression that management has meted out a punishment that seems inappropriate to the alleged crime committed, it remains a little misleading.

As the paper goes on to say, management claims to have caught the pair red-handed as they left the store, not just with a couple of pens and some gum but also a USB key.

"I just took the pens to use for work," Yassine, one of the men who has been suspended, told the newspaper.

"None of the products was on the shelf and they would all have ended up in the bin or being given to the Food Bank," he added.

Hmmn. The argument that a USB key - or a ballpoint or fountain pen for that matter - might, if thrown out, find its way to the Food Bank doesn't seem a very convincing line of defence does it?.

But perhaps the fact that the "hoard" taken by the two men is reckoned to be worth between 20 and 25 euros suggests that the store's management has rather overreacted.

It's hardly an amount to make a dent in Carrefour's profits.

Of course as far as the director of the store, Fabrice Bertin is concerned, that's not the point, nor the fact that Yassine has worked for Carrefour for the past six years.

"Theft is a serious offence and can result in a warning, a layoff or dismissal," he told the French website Le Post.

"For the moment the case is being investigated and I'll meet the two men on July 20 to decide what measures, if any, to take."