“Eh bien Monsieur, because I have so little work at the moment, it will be necessary to charge you more so I can make ends meet”.

In a million different ways, this sums up the French attitude to perfection: “I’m hard up, so you must pay more.” I keep telling people I am a francophile, and it’s true. But like all people who understand the Gallic culture reasonably well, I feel suitably qualified to be rude about la folie francaise. It’s like being family – in pretty much the same way as I observe the terminal madness of the British, and the rigidity of the Germans.

On a grander scale, the French deputy Foreign Minister accused the Germans two weeks ago of being “far too successful”. My German father-in-law throws his hands up on hearing this sort of illogic. And while a liberal German whose family were anti-Nazi, he is inclined to remark that sixty years of war reparations (called the Common Agricultural Policy) are more than enough, thank you very much. He has a point.

It is a tribute to the thickness of French skin that, on commissioning a survey about foreign attitudes to them as a nation in 2007, they were flabbergasted to discover that des etrangers find them arrogant, selfish, and rather inclined to take the piss.

This week contained a religious holiday on Thursday – although France is technically an atheist State. That being the day before Friday, most of the French faire le pont, roughly translated as taking a four-day weekend. Most national holidays here fall on Thursdays and Tuesdays – and coincidence has nothing to do with it. There are even some times in the year when a Thursday holiday is followed by a Tuesday holiday. Quite a few citizens therefore take a day each end on top and have a proper vacance.

But ask a Frenchman which nation takes the least holiday leave in Europe, and they will instantly assert “We French”. This is said in a tone suggesting that everyone else in the EU is a bone idle barbarian.

The Swiss (even the French Swiss) enjoy joking that the objective of being French is to organise the world in order to suit the French. The Belgians joke that Sarkozy hears an asteroid is heading for earth. He asks will it hit anywhere near France, and is told no, it won’t. Please don’t interrupt me again when I’m busy doing the crossword, he replies.

Our roofer M.Ruggeri insisted (when I rang him today) that we hadn’t seen him for three days because he’d been waiting for the weather to change. It hasn’t rained for longer than half an hour over that period. I would’ve asked him what he was waiting for the weather to change into (Euros, perhaps) but it doesn’t do to argue. He insists the weather will be fine on Monday. The Meteo says it will rain all day.

Talking of Sarkozy, a Parisian gossip of my acquaintance told me a few weeks back that the French President had remarked – in relation to Angela Merkel’s impatience with her spendthrift EU partners – “The bloody Germans are reverting to type”. I told him mischievously that of course the French would never revert to type, as they never vary from type anyway. She laughed out loud….as do most educated French when faced with their image – for if nothing else, they understand irony.

I suspect this is why the English bourgeoisie like the French so much: for their je m’en fou thing is an act, in precisely the same way as our air of superiority is an affectation. We are two nations with almost nothing in common except this chronic inferiority complex – and a shared suspicion of the Germans in triumphalist mood.

French European diplomacy plays entirely on English suspicion of the Germans, and German guilt. The French plan is to stay vaguely entente cordiale with les Rosbifs, so that when they finally fall out with le Bosh, the English can be dragged in on the French side….and blamed for any and all defeats. Then – when the war is over – the Germans will pay for the next thirty years. From 1870 until the present day, this has worked a treat.

Our M. Ruggeri is a nice bloke – ‘un bon type’ as the French say – but he is very French. He put up the scaffolding in preparation for tackling our roof, managing in doing so to completely blot out our TV reception via the dish. When I tackled him about this, he shrugged and said that to demonter the scaffolding would involve great difficulty. I was left feeling guilty for interrupting his important work for such a feeble reason. But when he’d gone, I took down the offending bit of metal obstruction in just under five minutes.

When I was in Austria skiing the Christmas before last, I fell into conversation with an easy-going barkeeper in Zell am See. We talked a bit about the EU and then he spoke as follows:

“Excuse me for saying this” he said, “But the main thing wrong with the EU is that you and the French are in it. If you weren’t, it would all work perfectly.

Both my francophilia and my patriotic sides are inclined to agree with him.