So here we are opening Marks & Spencer in Paris

As they say in France: Tout ça pour ça!Marks & Spencer closed its last shop in France in 2000 and since then many Parisians- and French in general- have been ambling around supermarket aisles bemoaning the loss of le lemon curd, le shortbread, la marmelade, les scones and other twee British delicacies.

So, imagine our excitement when about a year ago, rumour spread that M&S was going to open a store in Paris, on the Champs Elysées no less which is convenient for me as I work close by. True, it's less convenient for everyone else as mainly tourists go that way; its former location in the centre of Paris (Galeries Lafayette area) would've made more sense.

So on Thursday November 24th I ambled down there to see if I could grab a nice beef and horseradish sarnie for lunch. The shop had only been open for an hour or so and a sinuous queue of about three hundred people put me off so I postponed to the next day.

It's proof of my love for M&S beef and horseradish sandwiches that I stuck it out this time. Last time I queued so long for something was probably for the new rollercoaster at Disneyland in 1998. It made the queue on Uniqlo's opening day a couple of years ago look like a pleasant stroll down the pavement.

So first, I queued for the queue. Yes, 20 minutes to receive a small pink ticket that then allowed me to queue just outside the shop for another quarter of an hour. It was a good opportunity to chat to a few other ladies, mostly middle aged, and see what their expectations were. They confirmed what I'd been hearing from students at the school: top came jams, scones, muffins, cakes, biscuits and so on for le English teatime, followed closely by ready-meals. Then came Christmas decorations and assorted festive paraphernalia and underwear.

It thus came as rather a surprise upon entering the shop to see that of three floors, one is dedicated to undies, but only a small side room for food and two entire floors full of women's clothes. Hmm... did someone forget to conduct a market survey?

Shopaholic that I am, I only managed to find a bearable t-shirt- a rather interesting blue silk number embroidered in tiny metal skulls- which stuck out a bit amongst the rather dowdy seasonal cardigans and flashy sequinned party dresses. Of course I had to queue for ever as they only have ten fitting rooms for the three floors, none of which are equipped with space for the attendants to fold or put away. A lot of the ladies, mostly over 60, were having a tough time converting the sizes. And most didn't take the clothes they had tried on. Fashionable English clothes and French bourgeois women seem to be a bad combination.

Time to check out the food hall, which I finally did after another 20-minute queue, and shock-horror, the first thing my eyes caught was a big basket full of fresh fruit. Who trawls to the Champs Elysées and visits a British food hall to buy a banana? There was honey and a few jams, but no shelves stacked with all the goodies Paris has been drooling over for months. People were expecting something like in Fortnum & Mason's in London, an entire room of candied peel jellies and quince jams spiced with nutmeg. They got something rather less impressive than the food section WH Smith on rue de Rivoli has got upstairs in what used to be the travel section.

Moving in, I realised that most of the space is occupied by fridges full of M&S sandwiches (I got my beef and horseradish!) but with only around 15 different fillings. The hugely successful Eurostar terminal in London probably has 50 and counting. Same for salads. Notably absent were ready meals, a biscuit section (people were glumly falling back on kitsch double decker shaped tins full of shortbread), drinks (decent teas, cordials etc) crisps and Percy the pig sweets. Weirdly present were smoked salmon (Scottish, sure but ridiculously easy to get in Paris), muesli, yoghurt and the aforementioned fruit.

Suddenly it all clicked. M & S in Paris haven't opened a gorgeous food hall full of luscious titbits that in the French collective consciousness are the saving grace of British food. They've opened a glorified lunchtime snack shop. French people believe, more or less tongue-in-cheekedly, that the Brits eat grey meat and mint sauce and baked beans, probably boiled together, except when they are sitting around in a salon for four o'clock tea, indulging on fairy cakes and delicate fruity, spicy, buttery treats. I didn't even see any mince pies.

So who is this food shop aimed at? Clearly the busy Champs Elysées worker who will pop in for a lunch of Crayfish and Rocket on wholemeal, mango yoghurt, apple and cereal bar, washed down with blueberry flavoured water. And who then might buy a tin of shortbread and a slice of Scottish salmon on a whim. Who were the hundreds of people queuing outside? Middle aged and well off ladies who cross Paris to stock up on crumpets, lemon curd and elderflower tea. Monoprix figured that out years ago and you can now buy some of these things at exorbitant prices at the supermarket.

To be fair, the underwear section was buzzing and the salads and sandwiches were flying of the shelves so clearly a lot of it is popular. Time and the dying down of the initial hype around the store re-opening will say whether those who designed the new shop are right. My personal bet would be that the ground floor on which there food room is will eventually be all food, drink and seasonal stuff that is tellement Breeteesh. Clothes upstairs with maybe a men's section and undies with the wonderful all body gusset and bum uplifters in the basement.

To end on a positive note, I heard a lady ask one of the very friendly shop assistants where the crackers, carols, cards and baubles were, and she replied "oh it's still too early for us to display the Christmas items". Seriously on November 25th Christmas hasn't yet made it to town? It's a rather nice change.