Parisians are a strange bunch. Not content with eating frogs legs, laughing in the face of the smoking ban and brandishing baguettes where ever they go, it seems that have taken to zombie-like antics of a weekend.

Wandering through Jardin du Luxembourg last Sunday, I spotted one man participating in what appeared to be a slow-motion fight between himself, two planks of wood and an imaginary antagonist.

It was only when I peered further through the trees that the true extent of this madness was revealed. Scores of crazed-looking Parisians were all doing what appeared to be a slow-motion zombie dance.

Faces blank, they followed their leader’s every move, swinging their arms and slowly lifting their legs in unison, oblivious to the world around them. In short, they had been zombified.

It was like something out of a Simon Pegg film. I scanned the park nervously. Were the husband and I the only ‘normal’ ones left?

Some of them even had sticks.

I later discovered this new-fangled outdoor pursuit is a form of Tai Chi – or Kata – although the husband is still convinced that it was a Karate Kid convention.  No sane person, he claimed, would partake in such lunacy in a public environment.

I think I’ll stick to jogging.