Paris:- Saturday, 12. October 1996:- My clocks are still set to Central European Summer Time. A lot of people woke up on Sunday, 29. September - to find that the time had not changed -and were understandably confused.

Apparently, France 'invented' the notion of 'summer time' in Europe in 1976 - and other continental countries were forced to adopt it. The Eurocrats began to decide the actual dates of it in 1980, and this year the last Sunday in October has been chosen, instead of the last Sunday in September as in previous years.

However France is now opposed to the time-change - but The Eurocrats are talking about keeping the time-change until 2001. Brussels says the change is positive - not much energy is saved, but tourism, road traffic, and transports benefit.

A survey published in January concluded that only 28 percent were in favor of the present two time-changes a year in France, 72 percent prefer one unique annual time and of these, 41 percent prefer summer-time to 31 percent for winter-time.

Farmers are supposed to be sensible folk, yet they change their clocks like the rest of us - regardless of the cock that crows winter and summer at sunup no matter what time it is. In France, in the fields, when the clock says three in the afternoon, the sun says it is really 13:00, and it might be the hottest part of the day.

If I was a farmer, I would get a second clock and I would label it 'Real Time,' and label the other, 'Euro Time.' This would complicate things even more, but maybe it would make cows more cuddely and happy to be milked at 'Real Time' rather than at Eurocrat time.

Heavenly Bodies - The Eclipse

The sun is exceedingly bright today and when I went out to see the partial eclipse on the Sun by the Moon at about 16:30 - all I saw was very bright sunshine. So I watched TV's A2 news at 20:00 and they featured many shots of it, all looking unreal - in addition to a lot of clips of people lying on their backs on the grass at the Champ de Mars, wearing 'Eclipse shades' - which I do not have. I'll try to get some for the next rendez-vous on 11. August 1999. Now my wife, who has been at a boy scout camp all day, tells me she saw it by looking through a strip of film negative. This wouldn't have done me much good; the camera that I use dosen't use film.

Cold War Fallout

Armaments factories are closing down in France and their employees are angry because there do not appear to be any substitute industries on the horizon. After a big manifestation (demonstration) in Brest on 19. September that put 20,000 into the streets there, a huge crowd of angry workers marched today in Paris, from the place de le République to the Madelaine. All the unions concerned were also present.

Government projections estimate that 60,000 jobs will be lost directly over the next six years, plus another 127,000 military and civilian employees will be affected. There are 5,000 enterprises working on arms production in France, with 200,000 direct employees, and an additional 100,000 indirectly. France is the third largest arms exporter in the world after the United States and Great Britain.

Union representatives do not understand why France is not considered to be a competitive exporter by the government - and do not understand why workers and the high technologies they have produced for armaments production can not be re-directed towards other products.

See this week's Metropole Diary for other, coming Labor news.

Bicycles in the City

Since late last spring, Metropole has had reports on the gradual expansion of lanes set aside for bicycles on roads in the city. These are appreciated by bicyclists, but there is doubt that the amount of space set aside for them is worth the amount of traffic handled - and this seems to be the major argument again their expansion - or, outside of Paris - their introduction in other cities. [Don't miss the Bike Lane Poster.]

In fact, Paris with its 30 kilometres lags far behind Strasbourg with its 227 kms, 130 kms in Bordeaux, 150 kms around Grenoble, and Rennes with its 122 kms. To make bicycles really acceptable to users, French cities will have to suppress automobiles and the pollution they cause - and this advanced state of thinking has not yet been reached.

Nevertheless, the cause of bicycles advances bit by bit. The Sunday closures in Paris, from 8:00 to 17:00, of the right-bank expressway continue, still under the name of 'Operation Vélos-Piétons.'

True French Hero Returns, for 30th Time

The star of the first new Astérix album in six years is the fat one - Obélix, in the 'Galère d'Obélix.' The new edition appeared in Paris bookshops on Thursday, and Le Parisien thinks it is a winner, while Libération wonders why the stop button on the press wasn't punched before 2.8 million copies were printed.

Both papers printed serious critical reviews, with an outline of the story - of this comic book! - and Libération's main objection seems to be that the original designer, Albert Uderzo, is not the script writer that his late partner, René Goscinny, was.

Nobody lives forever and it is often difficult to fill the shoes of the departed with sublime perfection, just as there is no interdiction to critics filling their pens with acid, as Libération's has done. I have not read it, so I don't really know who is right.

Therefore some facts: The first, 'Aventures d'Astérix,' appeared in the French comic book - or magazine - 'Pilote,' in October 1959. The first album appeared in bookstores in 1961; entitled, 'Astérix le Gaulois.' The writer, René Goscinny, died at 51 in 1977. Eight million copies of the new title have been printed for European distribution; 2.8 million in French.

Now get this: 280 million copies of Astérix albums have been sold, as of 1. September 1996. Astérix has been translated into 77 languages; and is now in worldwide distribution: Web URL: http://www.asterix.fr/