First of all an apology from le Potage, an extended vacation has been taken, initially because we have been having a lot of fun. Then England won the Rugby World Cup. France did not...

It has recently come to le Potage's attention that looking for a job in the UK whilst living in France is hard. If you are taking your final year abroad start hunting now. Remember the ski season started last weekend. If you are extremely unlucky you will be forced into the bizarre world of the company website or, worse, the online application process.

A number of companies have websites aimed at helping graduates apply for jobs. A number of other companies have websites aimed at annoying potential employees and assuring that their potential workforce is mentally scarred for life. It is only fair to point out that, in the humble opinion of this colum, if anyone manages to even apply for a job with the Civil Service or Airbus then they certainly deserve to get it.

It seems right that if you are going to force people to indulge in a cretinously complex internet process in order to keep your own costs down you might attempt to make the process understandable. Offering no access to page 15 of a form except via pages 1 to 14 is not helpful.

The lack of a single contact detail other than email in a consortium employing nearly 50,000 seems careless (AIRBUS again). The provision of last year's application deadline dates by two of the Sunday Times' "Top 100 Graduate Employers" is a relatively minor blemish compared to one multinational which mis-spells its own name on an application form.

It is exactly the above nonsense which drives so many relatively normal people to postgraduate study. Whilst graduates are (often) clever enough to realise that companies receive hundreds of applications, this student has no interest in working for a company which cannot organise what is arguably the most important business function.

If all of this drives you away from gainful employment then you could do what the French government has just done and organise a National Horse Census. The results of the french exercise (Le Monde, 29th November 2003) show that there are 900,000 horses in France. That means that if every French person likes to ride and exercises their right so-to-do they would have exactly 21.6 minutes horse riding each per day. This calculation assumes that horses never sleep, that riding is possible even during the hours of darkness, that at no stage will death or reproduction be permitted (separately or in tandem) and that all horses are happy to be ridden. Some of these assumptions may be incorrect.

Le Potage also believes that the Union should add two geese and a duck to its burgeoning menagerie, 'til Christmas.