It was the first inkling I had that France's temperamental "social climate" was changing. I went to the municipal pool one morning in early May and found the iron gate padlocked, the words "on strike" scrawled on a piece of cardboard. The Arab and African immigrant pool workers got their pay rises, and the pool reopened two weeks later.
Now the Boeings and Airbuses are lined up wing-to-wing at Roissy Airport, like herds of sleeping pigeons. In the deserted terminals, electronic notice boards with flashing red lights announce, over and over, the fateful word annule. Oslo, Budapest, London, Moscow, Manchester, Zurich, Athens . . . all cancelled, just like Air France's hopes of maintaining its return to profit.
The Air France pilots earn a French minimum monthly wage every day they work - 40 per cent more than their counterparts at Lufthansa, 19 per cent more than those at British Airways. Lufthansa pilots approved without striking what the French pilots are destroying their own airline to avoid: lower salaries for newly hired pilots and a lower pay scale in exchange for shares in the company - but without cutting any pilot's present salary. Air France's other 43,000 employees long ago accepted similar measures and have turned against the pilots.
The World Cup has acted as a catalyst for old demands and created new ones. Train drivers, medical interns, teachers, shipyard and department store workers have all gone on strike in the run-up to the competition. As Le Monde put it, "the World Cup offers a tempting opportunity to put pressure on the government".
While the interior ministry fretted about British football hooligans and Islamic fundamentalists, the government seemed to ignore the disruption within French society. In a fragmented but seemingly contagious movement, Champagne workers marched in Reims this week, executives of the Weill stocking company were held hostage by their employees, and even the security guards who transport money went on strike.
Sociologists explain this outbreak of industrial action as a revolt against economic liberalism, against management's constant demands for higher productivity and lower salaries. For the French, every financial benefit or improved condition is a droit acquis, an inalienable right that can never be rolled back. The Air France crisis raises the very serious question of how France will cope in a global economy and in a deregulated, competitive Europe.
The French government still dominates the transport, energy and communications sectors. Thirty per cent of French wage-earners are government employees, and public sector management usually caves in. The airport baggage handlers who went on strike last week to demand Ffr3,000 (£357) World Cup bonuses accepted Ffr1,500 each. As a reward for striking, railway ticket collectors received a promise that all retiring workers will be replaced, and their own World Cup bonus of Ffr150 (£17.86).
"We want to conquer the heart of the world," says Air France's newest poster, showing a jet tracing a giant contrail heart in a blue sky. Fat chance. The 45-minute queue in my local Air France office begins on the pavement outside. The Venezuelan couple ahead of me were crying while a young woman with pursed lips explained to them that Air France could not confirm them on another airline until the day of departure. She asked me to come back later, when her boss would be there, to see if Air France could reimburse the hundreds of pounds I'd lost in switching my own flight last week. I returned, only to be told to write to the company.
Even the Irish Government has been affected. Mr Seamus Brennan, the Minister of State to the Taoiseach and chairman of the 1798 Commemoration Committee, had to use the Government jet to take him to ceremonies in Brittany last weekend. Mr Brennan and Ireland's ambassador were to have flown Air France from Brest back to Paris. They had to take the train instead - and they were lucky the trains were running.
But 10 days into the Air France strike, it is as if the country had gone into a state of denial. The dispute is costing the government-owned airline Ffr70,000 (£8,333) a minute but World Cup festivities have dislodged it in the news. Last night, four six-storey robots representing Europe (named Romeo), Africa (Musa), South America (Pablo) and Asia (Ho) converged on the Place de la Concorde for a party costing Ffr50 million (£5.95 million).
The government is notable for its absence in the labour disputes. The Communist Transport Minister, Mr Jean-Claude Gayssot, earned his stripes resolving last autumn's lorry drivers' strike.
But warming his hands at barricade fires with lorry drivers was one thing. The blue-uniformed, gold-braided pilots are another breed altogether - more management than workers. Mr Gayssot bungled his mediation and then dropped out of sight, though commentators joke he is locked inside a baggage hold. Then the Prime Minister, Mr Lionel Jospin, promised at the weekend to intervene. He expressed total support for the Air France chairman, then disappeared also.
One policeman was seriously injured during World Cup celebrations on the Champs Elysees last night when he was hit in the head by a bottle in scuffles with youths from Paris' immigrant suburbs. Twenty-three men were arrested. Police denied reports of fighting between supporters of rival soccer teams and said 200,000 party-goers dispersed peacefully after midnight.
Air France reached agreement overnight with a union representing a minority of its pilots, on a return to work today.
