Metropole Paris:- Monday, 31. March 1997:- Spring is really popping out in Paris. All of Metropole's readers who have written to tell me that they will be in the city - this week and next - are getting the warm and cold, the blue and the grey, and the first to return home and write, confirmed that Paris has tricky weather and Paris is the best place in the world to visit, despite it.

Yesterday I was dragged to an Easter-egg hunt, and at the lunch afterwards, I kept my full-dress winter gear on; inside, in the dining room because the doors were open.

The rest of the past week was sweet and sour, like the weather. Pascin's name was not unknown to me, but I spent most of the week finding out about him, with a great deal of pleasure - because for the first time, his life put Montparnasse into a wider, not mono-Anglo, context.

Most of us are vaguely aware that Montparnasse in the 1920's was a great place to be - if you had US dollars and time as well as the inclination to hang out with various literary and arty types; and somehow through the years this has been remembered as a largely Anglo-American fête.

Pascin, a European who became an American citizen, was, more than any other, the personification of Montparnasse during 'les années folles.'

The business of using a bar-café as a living room is not unknown to me, from time I spent in Munich; but it has largely died out in Paris. In Munich, the reasons were more or less the same - most people had tiny flats or just rooms, and the food and drink in a gaststatte was not overly expensive and they were always heated, so that is were people had their 'living rooms.'

Another thing that drew me into Pascin's story was the fact that he was a designer, as I have been. Unlike Pascin I have never much wanted to be a painter and have been largely content to 'put the little lines on paper.' I have done it in bars and cafés too, using the paper tablecloths - and they ended up on the floor, or the waitresses took them home.

After doing it in 'Paris' for 15 years, but working in a home atelier, I was not terribly sorry to quit. Although more or less forced to by the morose economic situation of the Paris press, the repeating of the millionth 'little line' was getting on my nerves. Sometimes I was drawing with my eyes closed.

That was no way to advance the state of things, so I am taking a little pause with it. Metropole gets me out, into Paris, and between it and the readers, I am having a good time.

But doing the research on Pascin reminded me what my other business is, and I think it is about time to get back to doing some drawings, some really fast ones. I don't know when this will start, but I don't think it is too far off. If they suddenly start to pop up here, thank Pascin.

Keep Off (Some) of the Grass

Some weeks or months ago, I reported that the City of Paris announced that it was going to take down its 'Keep Off the Grass' signs this spring.

After looking for Pascin on Friday around Raspail in Montparnasse, checking the Dôme for Pascin souvenirs, and looking around the Vavin intersection, I walked down the rue Bréa towards the Luxembourg Gardens. The point where rue Bréa meets rue Vavin and the rue Notre Dames des Champs is worth a look, and I will come back to it sometime.

In the Luxembourg, there where some hardy souls catching some coming and going sun, and I was looking around for spring flower displays. What there are of them are in the north-west corner of the park.

Three teenagers were walking across the grass towards the path I was on, and beyond them I saw a policeman wandering over the grass, going to opposite way. I remembered the 'grass is free' comment I'd written, and followed the policeman.

I stopped to look at some flowers and as I did so, the cop told some other teenagers who were lying o the grass, to get off. Then a whistle blew and when I looked around, the flic was shouting that I should get off the grass.