IF DURING lockdown you have binged on either Emily in Paris or Call My Agent, two successful comedy-dramas based in Paris, you will have admired the seriousness with which a working lunch is taken. These series’ characters are seen stopping for the classic and very civilised pause dejeuner, lunch “out” in other words, until recently a much cherished custom enshrined in French labour law.

Regulations insist that French workers stop for a minimum of 20 minutes for their lunch, and cannot take it in the work place – at their desks or on the shop floor, for example. Yet with the challenges of the pandemic, the French government has abolished this law in a bid to keep the crowds away from the brasseries. From now on it will be permissible to eat al desko. People like me, who admire the distinctively French classless attitude to eating, are devastated.