I’m staying at an Ibis hotel in Montlucon. The restaurant is all faux-French, called Le Comptoir Amélie.

As I approached the hotel I could see three good-looking young women sitting on the step outside, having a fag, and I heard one say to the other ‘Tiens, en voilà un autre’ – ´look, here comes another one’.

Turns out they were the receptionist and the waitresses.

The hotel is full of men, no women guests as far as I can tell, and le Comptoir Amelie had an extremely masculine atmosphere, more like the truck-drivers’ restaurant in a motorway service station.

I think the staff have given up pretending to be Amélie.