In reply to robert-hutton:
Ah, the French fonctionnaire!
Invented to make the British bureaucrat seem like a miracle of helpfulness, reasonableness and friendliness (except in places like Rotherham, toward vulnerable children, I doubt if the French could manage to match that level of heartlessness and cruel indifference).
They carry self-serving and useless pedantry to a new level, which is worrying seeing as 85% of the French working population are actually fonctionnaires (please note, this figure is only 85.34% accurate).
I recall having forced an epic retreat from half way up the Brenva face in a storm, with a then girlfriend going to the French police in Chamonix in tears to ask for a rescue. French plod sternly looks down his nose at the very distressed punter and says "Engleeesh climbers! Should have looked at the meteo!"
Which of course we had, it had said 3 days of beau temp. Unfortunately by the time we got back, this had been retrospectively changed to a week of storms, by the hindcast. The other thing he said was it was nothing to do with them, contact the Italians (there being apparently no communication links between the 2 sides of the MB massif). When we got down, we dutifully phoned them to tell them not to look. Then we got a fine display of Italian insouciance, as against French :
"Oh, we wouldn't have started looking for a few days anyway. But thanks for mentioning it"
Post edited at 12:16