The sound of cars outside is driving me nuts today. Not driving up and down noises, but continual blaring of car horns.

Most streets in Paris are fairly narrow, and the pavements have posts that stop cars driving up and parking on the pavement. Nice for the pedestrian, but terrible for delivery vans. So, now the vans just stop in the middle of the road, and the guys leap out to shift all the deliveries, but invariably fall into the nearest café for a quick pre-work coffee.

So, the traffic starts to back up behind the stationary van, and the car drivers are instantly onto the car horn. There's no room for the delicate beep-beep here either - it's usually continual beep-beep-beep-beep-beep (with a bit of variety thrown in so no-one confuses it with a car alarm). After ten minutes, it might evolve into one loooong beep that lasts forever - normally only heard on car chase films where the car crashes and the driver lies slumped on the steering wheel. I'm pretty sure the driver has just left a brick or something on the horn, and has gone to join the van drivers in the café for a pre-argument coffee....

However, no-one bats an eyelid at any of this normally - just a day in the life of Paris, repeated on countless streets, day in, day out. I *must* get some double glazing soon!

The most ludicrous example of this I've ever seen was a few years ago, where there was a carpark behind our building, and the entrance/exit was a little passage. Some poor woman was driving out when she came face to face with another car wanting to go into the carpark. Neither moved, but before they had chance to go through the full ritual of raised eyebrows, waving hands etc, another car pulled up behind the woman to also leave the car park. She now was unable to go forward or back up. The car behind was onto the horn in a flash. Then the car in front joined in. Beep-beep-beep...

And so it went on. For ten minutes at least.