Paris:- Wednesday, 5. March 1997:- About six or seven years ago, with the intention of doing a couple of posters with Paris themes, I toured all of Paris' 20 arrondissements with a couple of cameras.

I had two specific subjects in mind, but I took a lot of 'chance' photos that my path crossed, and when the 'tour' was finished in late September, there were 2,000-odd negatives in the can.

Every day that I went out, in addition to consulting my guides for specific targets, I would look at street maps of Paris. This was so I could figure out the logical public-transport 'loops' I could take. Doing these photos with a car was out of the question.

After a time, the street maps started to reveal other secrets. A cluster of small, perhaps winding, streets, placed at an angle to surrounding major thoroughfares might signal an older 'village' that had since been surrounded by the city as a whole.

Some of these 'villages' are visually more interesting than their, often, modern surroundings - and these are also usually areas in constant danger of being 'disappeared' by progress, by demands for housing or office space.

For two thousand years Paris has been rebuilding itself, and it is an automatic reflex. Only recently have citizens and some of their organizations begun to campaign to preserve vital parts of old Paris; and it is a case of 'better late than never,' and in general, it has been 'late' rather than 'sooner.'

There is a big part of the 20th arrondissement, south of Gambetta and east of the Père Lachaise cemetery, that is sort of a public transport 'desert.' The métro line three is at the top, line nine in the south and the circular line two, Etoile-Nation by way of Barbés, is on the west side. Inside this fair-sized semi-triangle, there are only two bus lines.

On one very hot, very high blue day in late July, in the year of my grand photo 'tour,' I took an un-planned shortcut through part of this. I looked at a local map at Porte de Montreuil and thought I could get somewhere more easily on foot, and in the course of a long and confusing trek under a blazing sun, I walked through the 'village' of Saint Blaise, or Charonne, as it is more commonly known.

It was nearly deserted; a cluster of village streets, sleeping in mid-summer in the heat. A tricky breeze was blowing bits of paper in odd corners, awnings were rippling - were there sleeping dogs? - and it really was the country in Paris, especially on that day.

Today, before starting out I did my planning. Considering this transport 'desert' I decided to start the 'loop' at the Porte de Bagnolet and take in the little 'Campagne à Paris' first. I hadn't counted on the time I would actually spend there, so when I got away it was late.

My 'plan' also called for a scout of some nearby possible sights, but I missed a vital turn and ended up wrecking my 'loop' which put the whole circuit into a tizzy. I may have as well not looked at the street plan at all.

When I say I may have taken a long useless walk for nothing, you might say you've read this far for nothing, and I'm afraid I agree with you.

The rue Saint Blaise has been 'fixed up.' It has been repaved with stone blocks from doorway to doorway, traffic access is restricted and so is parking. Usually, when this is done, younger people come in and take over the old shops and pep them up; restaurants open, doctors and dentists and lawyers open their offices on higher floors, and the area comes 'back to life' and starts the creation of its new character, laid on top of an older one.

Throughout Paris this has been done. Sometimes it is very successful, and the old-new quarter or 'village' becomes vibrantly alive. When it is not so successful, it is at least useful because it is tidier and local residents can remain where they were, without big raises in rents or influxes of all sorts of new, and perhaps too new, activities.

My quickie, zip-tour, of Saint Blaise late today, seems to show that the 'fix' has not been a big success, from a landlord's viewpoint. The considerable number of restaurants that I saw years ago are still here and even have the same names, but a particularly attractive café - it might not have been this to you - seems to have gone.

It is one thing to sit on the grand terrace of a city-centre café and watch the perpetual whirl of Paris pass your field of vision, but quite another to sit on a sunny terrace which is an extension of the street, and watch the shadows move along the walls as time passes, and nearly nothing else, except little columns of school kids transferring from kindergarten to after-school workshop.

Most of the older buildings are of few floors and many of the shops have not been fixed up, but do contain young people, who are doing things with computers. I do not know what they are doing, but they are not dressed like accountants. Other shops contain local creches that seem to have been left out of the planning of the nearby public housing; they these are not renovated either.

This tour of mine, is blown. Wrong day, wrong time of day; while writing this I am looking at the map again, and despite all the new high-rise housing that overlooks the 'village,' the map says there is more, more of the village. I half-think there must be; even though I do not remember from before all the traffic I saw pouring through the middle of it today, through the place des Grés.

At the top, on the rue de Bagnolet, there is the 12th century Saint-Germain-de-Charonne church, and the area is called 'village de Charonne' and not 'Saint Blaise,' as I have been doing. The church is dedicated to Saint Blaise, and the street, dating from 1672, was the main street of the village.

The bus number 79 stops right in front of it and you can catch this downtown, right by the Saint-Germain l'Auxerrois church, near Louvre-Rivoli, and the bus runs through the Marais and the 11th on its way here so it is worth a ride in any case.

If I look up and write all the 'history' of all the streets involved, this feature will be longer, but not more accurate. Instead of giving you the full tour here, which I can't do anyway, I hope that this morsel whets your curiosity and brings you out to the village of Charonne. If you do visit it, then you can write the piece and send it to me.

But if you can't do this and are still curious, let me know and I'll go back out there and give the place a proper once-over. To tell the truth, I am a bit unhappy with this either-or proposition, and I think I'll go back anyway.

My memory of it is pretty strong, so it is worth finding out if it holds up.