The Last Club Meeting of the Century

With the café La Corona full of civilians, club members are outlined in the green rectangle.

News from the 'Café Metropole Club'

Paris:- Thursday, 30. December 1999:- I can't say I'm terribly excited about the weather. The sky is low and it's leaking, and if it gets colder it'll leak sleet, slush or snow.

A lot of people are talking about the weather. Or at least they were, until it turned around and bit them. I've forgotten about the Seine being high until now, so I leave the métro at Odéon and dodge down the Rue Dauphine's narrow sidewalk.

Sometimes this is done in the street on account of wide people wearing puffed-out balloon-wear. The sky at the opening at Pont-Neuf looks like low slate. The bridge is slick and other people have come, like me, to see part of the Ile de la Cité under the swift and ugly brown water of the Seine.

The downstream park called the Square du Vert Galant is outlined by its fence, which is a bit above water. One of the boats of the Vedettes du Pont-Neuf looks like it is anchored offshore, but it is merely tied to its underwater quay.

The flotilla's office has a sign that says, 'no navigation today.' The expressway on the right bank is expressly for fish; so all of its cars, taxis, motorcycles, buses and speedy delivery trucks are on the Quai du Louvre, and they are in a bad temper about it.

It is rat-faced weather and it is in my face as I get to the Cafe Metropole Club's café, La Corona. The place is jammed with refugees from the elements.

Last week, the café's waiters said it would be - and this was when France was still 'soft.' The result is the club's area is nearly full of non-virtual non-members.

Within a minute I am joined by Berta and 'Scoop' Maginniss and we begin to take a cornered table, but before we can install another central one becomes free and I take it over before it can be invaded by non-members. It is a close thing.

Then the Kritz arrives and I ask him if he wants to be known as 'Markus' now. He says my spelling checker didn't ruin his Anatolian 'My Christmas' too much.

It is a bit distracting to have all these non-members around but I do not miss the arrival of Jill Mitchell who marches right through the hordes, pulls up a chair while telling me how much she loves Paris more than Toronto, which used to be known as 'the good.'

She says it is no longer known as such, but I say it can be 'City of the Week' because when Linda Gephart and Jack Truitt arrive after fighting their way through the masses, they say they are from Houston, Texas - which we nearly had as 'City of the Week' last week - but it was beaten out by a 'Village of the Week.'

For this 'Of the Week' business, it is first come, first served - unless it is something we've already had, like Wisconsin or Minnesota. I do, though, have to know what is driving people out of Houston in droves, to Paris.

According to Jack, it is very hot there. This will not go down well with many 'virtual' members down under in Oz, who are writing to me to say that it is somehow my fault the weather is so bad there they can't get their barbies lit properly. They can eat their turkey cold.

Linda Gephart chides me for not answering her email. I am astonished. I look at the name and email address that she's written in the club's 'real' members' booklet, and neither ring bells. Her email name is sufficiently different enough to be unforgettable.

A later check proves she is absolutely right. My gosh! She slipped through my answer-all-emails scheme. Oh, the shame of it! And then she has the nerve to turn up in Paris to become a 'real' club member.

Well, no excuses. As club secretary, all I can say is the Café Metropole Club is not any kind of ordinary club. Although its members are not flaky, its secretary is.

Jill Mitchell wants to come to live in Paris and we discuss various plots for pulling this off. After I describe all the monkey business involved, she says that Toronto is not so bad. I have heard this too, but usually from Siberians.

Mark Kritz has a new and fancy digital camera that he's brought along so he can show us postage-stamp-sized images on its tiny screen - of his rooftop lying in the street, six stories below his apartment on Montmartre.