Right, son, it’s time you became a man. Let’s go and fight the police,” I told my then 15-year-old sometime last year. It was a Saturday afternoon, and on Saturday afternoons for quite a while it was likely that somewhere in Paris “yellow vest” protestors or anarchists were looting shops, ripping up street furniture, or battling riot cops.

This particular weekend the action was conveniently at Place de la République, a few minutes walk from our home in the 10th arrondissement. My son was momentarily perturbed at the thought of wrestling with a robocop, before realising that his old man was winding him up again. But off we went to see what was going on in the square dominated by the statue of Marianne, the female embodiment of the French Republic.  

Paris security forces were by now well versed in dealing with the gilets jaunes. They’d been caught off guard when hordes of them laid waste to the Champs Elysées, and were now adept at “kettling” the unruly.