After the white out comes the black out

Chances are, if you try and board a French train from 8pm Tuesday this week, they'll either be no one driving it or a crowd of boisterous, politically-active students sat on the tracks in front of it. And even if you try to cheer yourself up with a trip to the Opera in Paris, you'll probably find that the entire cast have swapped the stage for the picket line. Welcome to the winter of pas très content.

Time to find out if Sarkozy is ready to stand up for his reforms of the gilded pension schemes, or regimes spéciaux de retraite, which originally (back in 1673) were introduced to provide incentives to work for those who were hesitating about taking a job that would entail almost certain death. So you can kind of see the government's point about a little modernisation. But 334 years isn't a very long time in French politics. And the railwaymen argue that although choking fumes are a thing of the past, the new enemy no. 1 is stress, so retiring at 50 should remain a God-given right.

With former socialist PM Michel Rocard claiming that France is 'unreformable', Sarkozy will be hoping that after a glorious autumn of divorce, soaring fuel prices, and strikes, he isn't about to suffer the same fate as the last guy (arch-rival Dominique de Villepin) who tried to mess with the French. 'Allez-hop,' they cried, 'off with 'is 'ed!'

French phrase of the day: avoir ras-le-bol - to be completely fed-up.