I live no more than ten minutes walk from Gare du Nord, in a quiet backwater of Paris, where the smell of a good English pudding, made with a firm but fair hand, draws many a visitor to my door. Last Friday night however, it was not the lure of a hot Plum Duff, but that old pretender the tire-bouchon which brought a turn of French boys to my door. This is not the first time that I have been taken aback by the fact that the inhabitants of a nation obsessed with the production and drinking of wine, often go about without a cork screw on their person. Now that smoking is no longer de rigueur, it could be imagined that the request for a cork screw is the new chat up phrase du jour. But no, it really seems that the French are either too disorganised to carry a corkscrew (an essential piece of picnicking equipment which is ALWAYS in my handbag) or that they rest assured that they will never be too far away from someone else who has one. So it was, last summer, that I made friends with several groups of young beaux and this year made acquaintance with my sprightly, beaming new neighbours. It may well be that my beautiful young relatives were the ultimate lure for the group who surrounded us on a Seine-side picnic in the heat of June, but ultimately I am the holder, the keeper of the tire-bouchon, therefore it is me who takes on the initial negotiations in these old fashioned flirtatious encounters. In the case of my new neighbours the first request led quickly to a second request, which then led to a third bottle of wine in my apartment and ultimately a rendezvous in theirs. In conclusion, if you wish to have encounters in Paris, make friends, meet people then picnic on a warm evening and remember to forget your tire-bouchon.