The patrol car was parked across the street, blocking access.

You down tools for a few days — less than a week in fact — and the world is turned upside down in your absence.

What an ungrateful lot we can be.

Packages delivered to two Canadian schools contained a human foot and hand which which may belong a Chinese student whose alleged killer was captured during a worldwide manhunt this week.

IT was either France’s King Louis XV or his mistress — no-one seems quite sure which — who once warned: ‘Apres moi, le deluge’.

ONLY yesterday morning one of the great cliches was set free once again and allowed to snort its way across breakfast tables everywhere.

A TEENAGE skier from the Nepalese national team who went missing while training in the Alps has been found wandering the streets of Paris thanks to a Facebook campaign, his team said yesterday.

A LEAVING Cert business class would have drafted a more innovative budget than our Government.

LEONARDO PIEPOLI continued Saunier Duval’s domination of the mountains in the Tour de France as the Hautacam summit played havoc with the yellow jersey on stage 10.

BRIAN O’DRISCOLL got beaten up in Bayonne, then the Irish scrum was ransacked by the Italians at Ravenhill.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is offering no mass mercy to the nation’s prisoners on Bastille Day this year.

John Roberts