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It should have been a peaceful week in the Big Apple.

If New Yorkers had trouble relating to the suffering of the French students rioting over not having inviolate civil-service job security, at least we understood where their Tourism minister was coming from when he declared, �We are currently in a situation of blockage.�

Had Chuck Jones and Holden Caulfield colla-borated on a nature documentary to mark the arrival of spring, it might have been similar to the scenario that unfolded in Central Park last week.

The week began with a brush of spring, as temperatures hit the seventies. Though it got much chillier, we couldn’t seem to shake the seventies after that.

If James Frey, Jayson Blair, and half-price sushi have taught us anything, it’s this: Be careful whom you trust. Still, last week’s endless displays of broken confidences must have surprised even the most cynical among us.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that in a week when we learned that the city will be, within twenty years, home to another 1 million souls (hey, someone’s gotta live above the new Whole Foods on East Houston), peoples’ need to claim their turf dominated the week.

This week’s column is in the form of a holiday cheer. H is for Hume, as in Brit, the guy who had a harmless chat�or was that an �interview�?�with the trigger-happy vice-president. A is for ass-deep, which is what the city was after 26.9 inches of snow fell (until it disappeared moments later).

Just when winter was getting boring�the Knicks losing night after night, the subways and buses running every day�came a week packed with so much showmanship that even the most jaded New Yorkers didn’t know where to look.

People come to New York to start fresh, but last week the city kept ramming head-on into the past.

This week, it seemed like the rest of the world just couldn’t be roused. Faced with a foam-mouthed pack of barking Democratic senators, Samuel Alito somnolently aced his way through confirmation hearings.