ONE of my personal mantras has always been ‘Ah well, soon be Christmas.’ I mutter it darkly to myself at any time of the year when I feel in need of a wry pick-me-up. But you’re right … its ironic powers do seem to dim a bit in December.

And the thought that Noël is just round the corner now is casting more gloom than light into the lives of the 12 employees of an electrical engineering company just over the water from you in St Lô. Yes, they turn up for work every day from 8 till 12 and then from 1.30 to 6. Good grief! Only an hour and a half for a workday lunch? What on earth is France coming to?

And you might think they should be thankful they’ve still got a job to go to when so many others are being given their cards under the mistletoe in the personnel manager’s office. But for the last seven weeks they have had no boss, no work to do and no salary. And there’s no electricity, no heating and no water in the building, either.

The secretary is six months pregnant, it’s dark when they arrive in the mornings, dark when they leave again at night (apart from the candlelight, that is) and it’s all a sight more stressful than actually working. Then, by the time they get home in the evening, they really don’t feel like talking much, so their families are suffering, too.

The reason is that they are caught up in a terrible legal tangle. The company has just gone into receivership, so they have to remain at the disposal of their boss – an employer they haven’t seen for ages and who denies that they still work for him, because although he owns the company, he had created a subsidiary to run it, which he also owned, and which was itself declared en désastre. Still with me? Good, because I’m not sure I am.

But if they just threw in the sponge, as they say here, and went home, they might be accused of having resigned, and that would cost them various redundancy payments and other allocations to help them to find new jobs and certain family allowances.

So their unions, the advocate and even the works inspectorate have all advised them to stay put until the employment tribunal sorts it all out at the end of January. In the meantime, money is starting to get a touch tight for some of them, and one poor soul quipped that Christmas lunch might just have to be a barbecue.

N OT that they’re the only ones counting the eurocents. On 1 December Les Restos du Coeur – ‘resto’ being popular French for restaurant and ‘coeur’ heart – opened their 24th winter campaign providing hot meals for the homeless and food parcels for the needy.

Last year in Dinan and the rest of northern Brittany alone, 710 volunteers in 14 centres distributed 500,000 meals to 6,100 people, including 2,700 families. And that was before the world’s economy hit the fan, so goodness only knows what the figures will be this time.

Even the regular restaurateurs are having to tighten their belts as the bad summer season and current financial downturn bite deeper and deeper. Here in Dinan, trade so far in 2008 is a massive 70 per cent down on last year, and it’s a vertiginous 60 per cent drop for Brittany as a whole.

In fact, many Breton restaurants now owe their survival to the, um, foreign trade which makes up a fifth of their remaining custom. And by ‘foreign trade’ they mean you, dear reader: the Beans and other Brits (35 per cent of all visitors), not forgetting the Germans (20 per cent) and a dozen or more other nationalities, the Belgians, Italians and Dutch prominent among them.

The habits of the dwindling few who do still straggle in are changing, too. Meals tend to be less formal, less frequent and less lubricated. The quick apéritif – or apéro – in the bar beforehand now qualifies for a dodo sticker, as does the coffee afterwards, and the bottle of wine has been replaced by a glassful and a carafe of tap-water.

This Château la Pompe (pump) really is la goutte d’eau – the drop of water (that makes the vase overflow), the last straw, because by law the restaurateur must provide water on request and free of charge, too.

Desserts are often skipped altogether, or even shared, would you believe? Good grief, a few years ago anyone even thinking of asking for a mousse au chocolat and two spoons would have been frogmarched out through the kitchen and left beaten and bleeding among the bins in the back alley.

And when does the new, nit-picking, penny-pinching client want to eat? He wants to eat when he’s peckish, which is now, which is just about any time 24/7, so move!

AND moving the trade is. Menus are getting shorter and less esoteric, and the food is being more carefully targeted at, say, a meal for mates, the 30-minute lunch, Ladies’ Day (a free rose for each female diner), la fête des secrétaires, special cost-price dishes and a coffee for one euro.

Mind you, it was about time they did something, because France’s proud gastronomic reputation is in tatters, according to discerning diners. Too many restaurants don’t even have a real chef, and it’s odds-on that your canard à l’orange is just industrial frozen food straight out of the microwave and shoved on to the plate by some cook that the waiters call Captain Birdseye.

So last year a few worried chefs got together to create a special label guaranteeing that at least 80 per cent of their dishes were in fact prepared on the premises with fresh ingredients.

Maître Restaurateur was hoping to do for the nation’s cuisine what Camra did for real ale. But only 200 of the country’s 120,000 restos showed any interest, the other 119,800 presumably feeling that they didn’t really qualify.

And on 14 December Olivier Roellinger, the greatest chef here in the west of France, will be cooking his last meal at his Michelin three-star restaurant in Cancale. After 26 years in front of the ovens, he just doesn’t feel up to it any more. Well, he is 53 now and still suffers from leg injuries received when he was assaulted 20 years ago. Nothing to do with the food, I hope.

He could have carried on if he had been prepared to delegate, but he didn’t feel it would have been the same somehow. And, inspired by the adventures of the corsairs in neighbouring St Malo, he now intends to spend his time exploring the world and all its different culinary traditions.

Mind you, it is nice to get out while you’re winning. In 1966 Alain Zick, another great chef, shot himself when his Paris restaurant lost a Michelin star. And in 2003 Bernard Loiseau also handed in his dinner pail when his three-star restaurant in Burgundy dropped from 19/20 to 17/20 in the GaltMillau Guide.

Loiseau got the Légion d’Honneur in 1995 and once claimed that ‘we are selling dreams. We are merchants of happiness’. But he had always said he would kill himself, too, if he was downgraded. None of which is very cheerful, but not to worry, eh. As I always say when my own zip is failing to zing, ‘Soon be Christmas!’ And this time it really will be.

So here’s hoping that you all have a very Joyeux Noël. I only wish we could be there on The Rock to share it with you, but our two daughters want to spend it at ‘home’, by which they mean Dinan, their ville natale, rather than Jersey. Yes, strange girls.

Kenavo!