Perth:- Saturday, 29. March 1997:- I well remember the Chirac motorcade up the Champs with him grinning like a cheshire cat and the loonie cameramen on two wheels jostling for positions as though they were covering the greatest event of all time.

I think I learnt something about the French that night as I lay in my bed in Les Arcs listening for the first time to a nightingale and realizing what the poets were all writing about.

Just so you will have a couple of strange birds in Metropole for a change, here are a couple of 'roos watching the humans belt little white balls around on our golf course at Margaret River, one built by the locals decades ago, and given grass greens only recently, as opposed to sand.

ps: Here's a fishing picture taken also by me at Margaret River; showing fishermen, casting for salmon in the Indian Ocean at dusk.

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time

Paris:- Saturday, 29. March 1997 Metropole's eMail intake is not filled with a lot of odd stuff, but when I got the following, I didn't know what it was about.

"...for your fascinating article on your tiny selection of the Grands Boulevards. I've got the time, too, so one day I may see you in that living room away from home."

So I wrote to Kim in Australia and asked him about the 'living room away from home.' He replied with a quote from the piece - saving me looking it up - and it all makes sense now. A couple of other readers have commented on the 'Grands Boulevards' feature, which has surprised me a bit, since I thought it was a little 'thin.'

Before hitting the street that day, I knew I'd be writing about Jean-Paul Belmondo's wonderful theatre and the Musée Grévin. When I got there and headed west towards the Opéra, I got slightly disorientated as I quickly ran out of the boulevard des Italiens - and did not find the cinema, Le Grand Rex, where I expected it to be. It is the other way; towards République.

Back at the office, when I opened my source book, my jaw nearly hit the floor when I saw the length of the entries for all of the 'Grands Boulevards.' It wasn't going to fit in any single feature; it looks like a book's-worth of material.

The good part of it is, I can add the rest to the list of 'features to do someday,' and since readers have written, what little I did do was not too little after all. The other good part is to get an eMail from West Oz. Without looking at an atlas, I reckon it is about as far from Paris as you can get and remain on the planet.

Getting the photo of the golfing kangaroos is just too good to pass up, especially as they remind me that the fake mountain at the Zoo out at Vincennes has just reopened, after a longtime closure.

The Zoo is about as far from here as I can go without getting close to Baden-Württemburg, and this photo of cute animals should hold off the friends-of-animals front until I get the lust to wander off to that nearly foreign territory. And in case there are doubters out there; I have been to the zoo, and it was a really cold day too.

I have never been to Oz though. Reports on it I have received are mixed; but not all of them are bad. I mean, I have golfed on sand greens. They are difficult, but not impossible; I have always gone for high scores in any case.

Note: For a more detailed view of life in West Oz, The Post Online is, as the slogan goes, "Perth's first and only online newspaper." This is a lot better than not having one at all, and is a heck of a boon if you are having trouble getting your subscription hard-copy version in Baton Rouge, to name just one important town where Metropole readers live.