KEY POINTS:
On a grey, drizzly morning in a suburb of Paris, the misery and tension are almost palpable at the local railway station as commuters cram the platform, right to its edge.
The eyes look blank, but the brains are whirring with a mass of tactical questions: Will a
train come? How badly crowded will it be? Should I take my coat off and hang it over my arm, to avoid becoming suffocatingly hot? If I enter the train doors smartly from the side, can I sneak in ahead of that fatty to my left?
Rugged humour is rarely on the agenda in France at times of adversity. But now, after a week of public transport strikes to protest pension reforms, the mood can fairly be described as "sauve qui peut" (every man for himself) mixed with resignation, anger and exhaustion.
Each day, travellers sift the true from the false in the emergency timetables set up by the national train company, the SNCF, and the Paris transport system, the RATP. With air traffic controllers and other civil servants also staging a strike over pay, travelling by plane has also been an uncertain venture.
Anger at the strikers - who are defending the right to retire as early as 50 - and cheek-by-jowl travelling have occasionally spilled over into altercations among commuters or with railway staff.
At Paris' Saint-Lazare station riot police dressed Robocop-style with body armour and clubs patrol during rush-hour, fanning out in a show of strength to deter France's new yobs: middle-aged white men in suits.
The primary battlefield of the Parisian is the Wars of the Metro: the struggle to get on board an already crowded train is almost a preview of the end of civilisation.
The basic strategy is to choose a spot on the platform where a door will stop, then struggle to stay there when the metro arrives and let the crush carry you inside. Once inside, the choice positions are normally between carriages, where only so many bodies can cluster. It is generally the biggest, strongest and most determined males that prevail.
Those who travel by car get up before dawn to get any chance of arriving at work at a reasonable hour: on most days now, the traffic jams around Paris total several hundred kilometres.
Within Paris itself, the city's brand-new rent-a-bike system, with more than 11,000 cycles for short-term hire, has been a godsend. No one raises eyebrows any more at the sight of an office worker zipping along a bus lane on roller blades or even a child's kick-scooter.
The strikes have cast a pall over the city of light. The Paris Opera has kept up some performances, but with backstage workers on strike there is no lighting, and the dancers wear their own outfits rather than costumes made and fitted by unionised staff. Paris Opera, by the way, enjoys the special early retirement scheme thanks to an act of kindness by King Louis XIV in 1698.
Museums and cinemas are closing their doors early these days so staff can get home. Restaurants have been hit by the loss of business. Snooty Michelin-starred eateries on the Left Bank, where once you would have to book a week or two in advance to get a table, have taken the almost unconscionable step of accepting walk-in customers.
In Darwinian style, those who have survived best have used rat-like cunning, called "le systeme D" in these parts, which involves working from home where possible, sleeping on a friend's couch, car-pooling and other techniques to avoid travel and stress.
But for others, it is just too much. A report on a French news channel said doctors were experiencing a surge of patients who were at the end of their tether. Sick notes and tranquillisers, rather than a dose of dark humour and a slap on the back, are becoming the order of the day.
