I've made the exciting discovery that you can see the Eiffel Tower from our front room. Admittedly you have to stand on a ladder and crane your neck somewhat, but you can definitely see the top of it.

I love the Métro.

There, I've said it. Yes, it's smelly and yes it's impossible to negotiate with a wheelchair or a pushchair, but I love it.

I love the fact that the trains have tyres so the ride is smooth. I love the fact that he stations are sometimes so close that you can see people waiting at the next station down the line. I love those little levers that Parisians can flick effortlessly to open the doors, while the rest of us fumble clumsily. I love those little tip-up seats (which, gloriously, are called strapontins). I love the fact it's so cheap. And I love the fact that the map is almost comically difficult to understand, and the way the staff can be spectacularly rude.

But it knocks spots off the tube in London. There are three good things about the London Underground: the logo, the font and the map. That's it.

It’s funny. When I walk around Paris, it all seems very familiar. I know how the Métro works, I know a bit (a bit) of the language and I know basically where everything is in relation to everything else. I’ve been here dozens of times before, and now I live here. Obviously that makes for a rather different experience, but I do feel strangely at home.

When I’ve moved to other countries before, they’ve been completely foreign and undiscovered. I remember sitting on the Tunnelbana in Stockholm on my first day, looking around at the ads on the train and thinking that I didn’t understand a single word of most of them. But here I can basically understand everything. I can even read a newspaper to some extent. It makes it a very different experience.

I also got a good reminder of what a small world the advertising industry is. There’s a guy here that comes form Stockholm, and knows all the people I used to work with in Sweden. I got a string of emails from former colleagues he’d mentioned me to. Which was great - but it also means that you must never ever say anything bad about anyone in this industry. Because even if you don’t work with them now, you probably will in the future.

I seem to take my habits I develop in one job to the next. After I was in Asia, I came back using lots of exclamation marks, which is the done thing there, but it a bit of a faux pas in the UK. They're loolked on with such disdain, in fact, that they're commonly known as 'screamers' or worse still 'dogs' cocks'. I managed to get out of that habit, thank God.

In the UK, I was mostly working on the Halifax, which is a big bank over there. Coming from Yorkshire and making the fatal mistake of assuming their customers are stupid, they're not too hot on punctuation. So they insisted on having no stops at the end of their headlines. IBM Europe, on the other hand, have stops at the end of every headline - so I have to get back into that habit or risk looking careless.

But that's not the worst of it. As I've mentioned before, my UK agency was a bit of a sweatshop - and its USP wasn't quality, but cost. Which meant that you didn't argue with the client, you just made the changes and sent the stuff off. And there was a very strange system whereby the account team didn't sell the creative to the client, they second-guessed the client before the work was presented. So there was an extra barrier to get over before the work got as far as the people who were paying for it.

The problem was that quite often the account handlers didn't really understand what makes copy and artwork sell, and they'd quite often make the work worse. Which doesn't really help anyone - and was reflected in the fact that out of 14 submissions to a DM awards in the UK, they didn't manage to get a single nomination.

It's different here - which means that if I'm not careful people will think I'm a pushover. So I have to make sure I'm prepared to defend my work. I'm not the kind of person that throws creative hissy fits, but one or two may be in order to esablish my reputation! (oops - screamer)

I got this comment from a reader yesterday. At least it means there are some, I guess.

Here we go - the next Rough Guide to ________

It was an anonymous comment, naturally. Now I don't know why, but I have a funny feeling this person lives within a few km of their parents (or quite possibly with their parents or some surrogate mother of a girlfriend) in some godforsaken area of the UK. Which is fine, but it's not the life I've chosen - and I'm quite happy with my choice, thanks. There's a whole world out there - and I'd like to see as much of it as I can.

Speaking of tiny little scraps of life, Isobel and Sam arrived in Paris on Friday.

Sam liked the apartment, which is a relief, and we had a lovely day on Sunday doing the tourist thing. Isobel had a whale of a time in the Tuileries, riding on the carousel and running about in the sunshine. I think she's going to like it here.

While I was walking to the boulanger on Sunday morning (I know that sounds poncey and 'look at me, aren't I French' but it happens to be true) I spotted a tiny little baby bird that must have fallen out of a nest and was lying on the pavement dead.

I don't know why, but the idea of this tiny little scrap of life that had been snuffed out almost as soon as it had come into the world really got to me. I like to think that I'm quite prosaic and not really affected by this sort of thing, but it's increasingly not the case. I don't know what's happening. Maybe I'm just getting older, or maybe it's that I'm a parent and have a little scrap of life of my own to look after. Whatever it is, I think it's probably a change for the better.

I went to our new apartment last night.

the French take EVERYTHING. There are no light fittings, no bathroom fittings, no curtain rails, nothing.

Ah well. C'est la vie, I guess.

So last Saturday I decide, since the weather was bad here in Paris and I couldn't face a weekend stuck in my room with only CNN for company, to go back and see the family, aho are in the UK until next week, when we move into our new apartment.

I got a cheap flight, and set my alarm so I'd just be able to slip out of the hotel ans onto the Air France bus, which leaves just up the road from Place d'Etoile. Easy, right?

Wrong. What I hadn't thought about in my stupidity was that Saturday was a national holiday for the end of WW2, complete with military parade up the Champs Elysées - which, fairly obviously, meant there was no bus. It was leaving from Porte Maillot, about 1km up the road.

I gamely took the Métro, and got the bus two buses after the one I'd originally planned to get, and got to Terminal 2 at CDG just after the gate closed. Bugger.

I went to the Air France Ticket office in full expectation of not being able to afford a new ticket. After all, these cheap tickets are non-refundable etc, etc. I got into the queue, and listened to the American woman in front of me, who from the sound of things was in pretty much the same situation.

She wanted to go to London, and it seemed her plane hadn't actually taken off yet, and why couldn't she be taken to the gate (the subtext being, of course, that she was the most impossibly important person in the world and she should be able to do whatever the hell she wanted because she damn well wanted to, regardless of her failings in actully getting to the check-in desk on time).

The Air France woman, understandably, was having none of it - and quite rightly too. She very firmly but very politely made it quite clear that this woman was going to have to buy a new ticket, and that all the shouting and foot stamping would not make the slightest bit of difference. She also seemed to have just the slightest flicker of a smile when she told this woman her ticket would cost €800. Which is full-price for the return journey, plus tax.

At which point the woman went off the scale. She got her cellphone out and started calling some friend of hers, telling her how pissed off she was with the shitty service she was getting from Air France in General and this employee in particular (bear in mind she's no more than 1m away from this employee at this point) and generally being about the most unpleasant person I've seen in a long time.

She eventually went on her way, hopefully for a long lie down and some therapy, and soon it was my turn. Now I'm not saying I did anything particularly charming, but I just told the same person what had happened and said I'd like to get on the next flight, but it depended on what it cost.

She sorted out a very good deal for me, whereby the tax and return fare I'd paid was transferred onto a new ticket, and I just paid the marginal cost for mu outward journey, which was about €140. Not cheap, but not the end of the world and it served me right for not getting up in time.

There's a valuable lesson there. It's just a shame that the person that needs it most wasn't around to see it.

Right. This time it's serious. I AM going to keep this blog more up to date, and I AM going to make it interesting, dammit.

Here's interesting fact number one: I now live in Paris. I've been here a week now and I love it. Even though I'm living in a tiny hotel room on my own, and even though I'm eating in McDonalds more than I (or indeed anyone except the population of the midwest) would like - due to the fact I'm having to make three weeks' salary last six weeks at the moment, I think this is going to be a fabulous place to live.

It started on my first morning, when I arrived at the office. Now when I was a lad, I learned at school that French kids start school at 8 and finish just after lunch. So perhaps not unnaturally I thought I should make a fairly early start and arrived at 8.45 and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Turns out the Creative Department start work at 10. Which means a nice long breakfast and a leisurely walk to work for me every morning, since my flat is about 2.5km from the office and I desperately need to get fit.

The office environment seems very civilised, too. The last agency I worked at made every job into a crisis - to the extent that I have a terrible feeling the account director is going to make herself very ill indeed if she's not careful. But here there seems to be a bit more... perspective.