In the window are dog mittens, fashionable dog coats, haute-cuisine dog biscuits, dog toys – including stuffed animals (pets for dogs?) – and packets of the “finest-quality straw from the Pays d’Auge” (appellation controlee produce for pets?).There is not a pooper-scooper in sight I inquired within. The shop did not sell them: no demand apparently, despite the 300,000 dogs living in Paris.Over the years, committees have been formed by the town hall to study the issue, scientific studies have been commissioned, and information campaigns have been aimed at dog-owners (encouraging more fraternite and less liberte.)Other French cities have, so to speak, stamped on the problem. Grenoble led the way in the 1980s with instant fines, prosecutions for persistent offenders, even the seizure of pets. At the same time, the city built 120 “sanitary dog spaces” and conducted a permanent civic- awareness campaign.Similar policies, as well as a tax on dog-owners, were proposed to the city of Paris as long as eight years ago. They were rejected by the then mayor, who said such “repression” would not work and would penalise the old and the poor.The mayor was, of course, Jacques Chirac, who is notoriously soft-hearted about animals.

At one point the future president lectured dog-food manufacturers on the need to make their offerings conducive to drier and more compact dog poo. He was, it is said, reluctant to do anything which might offend so many thousands of dog-owning voters.Nothing much is likely to change soon. Complaints about dog dirt are the third most frequent reason for letter-writing to the Paris town hall (ahead of fear of crime) But this has been true for many years now. The Agriculture Minister, Philippe Vasseur, will shortly present a law to parliament on the control of pets. It is aimed mostly at controlling savage dogs such as pit bulls and at the better regulation of cat and dog sales.

It also proposes a free, if limited, veterinary service for poorer pet owners. There is no suggestion of a licence or tax to control dog numbers, as some had urged.Non-dog-owning Parisians should console themselves with the wisdom of the 19th-century poet Gerard de Nerval, who provoked the dog lovers of his day by promenading with a lobster at the end of a pink ribbon. When questioned on his motives, he replied that lobsters “Know the secrets of the sea, they don’t bark …”He might have mentioned at least one other reason, in a crowded city, to prefer a crustacean to a dog.John Lichfield. Spain’s Prado museum has launched a spectacular exhibition of European art devoted to sensual pleasure. But the event prompted howls of pain from museum employees, anguished at what they call “conditions of absolute chaos”.

Members of the museum’s workers’ committee interrupted the opening ceremonies this week by whistling and banging drums, and brandishing banners and stickers saying “Save the Prado”. They plan a series of protest actions including strikes – although their leader, Antonio Solano, reckons a work- to-rule would be sufficient to bring the museum, housing one of the world’s finest art collections, to a standstill.
More than 100 sixteenth and seventeenth century paintings, including four splendid Caravaggios as well as works by Titian and Breughel, celebrate the pleasures of the five senses. Workers say the exhibition, “improvised at the last minute”, was mounted with unprecedented haste, causing disruption throughout the museum. They say the accumulation of temporary displays and major repairs to the dilapidated building will close dozens of rooms.”For weeks visitors have been tripping over ladders and toolboxes, as workers have been driven to the limit, shouting to each other, banging, causing disruption that is totally inappropriate in the Prado,” complained Alfredo Pineiro, a member of the workers’ committee and a museum restorer.Workers who have seen their numbers cut and wages frozen are “totally demoralised”, Mr Pineiro says. They want some order to be put into the shambolic internal organisation of the flagship of Spanish culture.It was, workers say, “madness” to mount such an ambitious project during major structural repairs.A spokesman for the sponsoring bank, the BBV, said the exhibition had not figured in its plans for this year but was the result of an invitation by the Secretary of State for Culture, Miguel Angel Cortes.. For Gaspar Aghajanian, it is a matter of principle.

For his wife Astrid, it all goes back to the day 82 years ago when the Turks piled the starving orphans of Armenia on top of each other in the sand and burned them alive. “My mother saved me from the fire by pushing me under a pile of corpses,” she says. “She used to tell me afterwards that when she heard the screams of the children and saw the flames, it was as if their souls were going up to heaven.”
Astrid is now 83, her husband 85, but their battle – against another generation of Turks – is contained in a thick file of correspondence in their bungalow home in Shoreham-on-Sea, West Sussex.No one comes well out of those fading letters and cuttings; neither the Turkish authorities in Cyprus who refused to compensate the Aghajanians for the property looted from their home after the 1974 Turkish invasion – on the grounds that they were of Armenian ethnic origin – nor the Foreign Office which failed to persuade the Turks to pay for their plunder, even though the Aghajanians are full British citizens.”Deplorable,” is how one Foreign Office letter – from Tim Eggar, then parliamentary under-secretary, – described Mr Aghajanian’s situation in 1985. But it went on to admit that his claim would not be met unless there was a political settlement on the island.What the Aghajanians lost in Cyprus – Persian carpets, furniture, an ancient-coin and stamp collection, photographs of relatives since massacred, a piano, family letters and a large library of valuable books – would only amount to a few thousand pounds.