Postcard from... Paris

Over the last ten years, Paris has lost more than fifteen per cent of its parking spaces (AFP)

Parking on the street in Paris has always been tricky. It is becoming an expensive nightmare.

With a resident’s permit, you used to be able to park your car for a week for just over €3 (£2.15). The charge has just been trebled to €9.

Not too bad? Yes, but first you have to find your parking place. I spent 40 minutes touring my quartier looking for a space after driving back from Lille the other day – a new personal record.

Successive Paris mayors have eroded the number of on-street parking places by turning them into stations for Velibs (the mother of the Boris Bike) and the new self-hire electric cars. There is also a Putin-style furtive colonisation of the streets by yellow-painted “delivery” places.

Ordinary motorists are allowed to use them between 8pm and 8am – but only the ones with yellow dotted lines. The ones with unbroken lines must stand empty all night. After driving my daughter to Orly airport the other day at 5am, I returned to find a big, fat, empty, legal parking space close to where where I live. Oh joy. Oh delight.

Two days later, I returned to find that some passing speedster had ripped off the front bumper of my car. A note had been left on the windscreen with a phone number.

I tried to call. The number did not work. I checked. It was part of a batch of numbers issued in the French West Indies. This one seemed to be a fax number.

In other words, the assailant of my bumper took the trouble to stop his car to leave a false number. Oh rage. Oh despair.