'Winter' In Paris Confirmed

Mystery midafternoon on Montmartre - before
the rain and snow.

Is Bigger Better?

Paris:- Monday, 5. March 2001:- Why should you or I believe last night's TV-weather news lady? Simply because I spent some time experiencing last week's local forecast, which turned to be essentially correct.

On Wednesday up on the heights of Montmartre, there was fairly steady rain mixed with a little snow, a chilly wind, and the predicted low temperature. I had a damp nose on Wednesday.

By Friday, the part of the day I experienced had chilly winds pushing low temperatures around, with a more or less low overcast to keep optimism at bay. Again my nose was damp, and my hands were cold like they were on Wednesday.

This added up to 'classic' winter in Paris. This doesn't happen every year or all of the time, but last week it certainly was being forecasted fairly correctly.

For this reason, when last night's TV-weather lady showed the coming week, with its wave of depressions coming at 36-hours intervals, I believed her. She also predicted average daytime highs of about 10 degrees for Paris, with another three or four degrees for the south of France.

The best part of the forecast is the rise in average daytime temperatures from five to ten degrees. This will be almost balmy even if there's some rain and little breezes. Make sure the terraces you pick for watching Paris pass are heated.

Drôle de Temps

Coming back to my place last night after having a jolt of café, I passed a guy on the avenue who appeared to be talking into a phone, but I could see he didn't have one.

Around the corner in my street I saw a man ahead, moving a green garbage container from the sidewalk on my side to the other. As I passed he was coming back, mumbling.

No. He was making a comment on 'our times.' "Drôle de temps," is what I think I heard.

He had put out his garbage bin early, and then somebody had come along and moved it. He moved it back. This is the kind of thing that goes on all the time now that it is truly the 3rd millennium.

I don't know why he had to tell me this. To be neighborly, I told him I was thinking of the 'plague of the week.' To this, he lifted his hat and scratched his forehead. Then he smiled.

He is not alone in thinking that we are having a 'drôle de temps.' We are together in this.

Dimitri, At Ease

I had been standing at the bar in my 'Sunday' café a fair amount of time before I noticed that Dimitri was also at the bar, over on its other wing. He had already seen me, so he slid around the jam of Sunday drinkers at the angle where the two wings meet to join me.

Dimitri has been working hard on restoring two frames for the last three months. Both were finished about the same time and delivered - then they have had their 'corrections' - the cheques arrived and have been deposited, and Dimitri is a bit 'at liberty.'

Loose ends was more like it. He knows he still has all the jobs he put 'on hold' to do. But to work non-stop on big deals for three months - you don't just 'turn off' from this overnight and return to normal.

Being in this pre-de-stressed state is also bad for the health. Suddenly the throat is itchy, the nose is runny, and there is an all-over fatigue - the total 'blahs' in other words.

So I'm not surprised to see Dimitri today when I go out to my weekday café for a bracing jolt of café. He is standing at the bar looking distracted, with his lonely half-full balloon of rouge. On top of everything else, he is quitting smoking - so he's is in the doldrums of a mood.

I try to remember the correct formula for getting through a pre-de-stressed state with a minimum of frittered-away time and money, and this is when I remember I can't remember the last time I pulled this off. It must have been in 1998, in August, but I'm not sure.

The few ideas I do have are so lame - 'Get lost In Trouville for a couple of days!' - that Dimitri leaves his glass as it is - half-full, and leaves.

Actually, all he has to do is somehow survive three days - ignoring all calls to do the work he put aside - until he leaves to go up north and see one of the important frames he just did, filled with a small painting by Rembrandt.

On the terrace of the Parc de Bercy last Wednesday, Paris was having its winter and the light was lousy. There were a few other hardy people looking at 'Les Enfants du Monde' statutes.

Their arrangement is not much - they are standing in a line with a fair amount of space between them. I went on the grass and saw to my horror that it was the dreaded Ile-de-France hidden-muck ooze-grass.

This stuff gets in any grooves your shoes may have. Unless you have a lot of time and patience, it doesn't come out easily. If you forget it, it dries like the clay it is, and leaves hard dry clods of it all over your floors - but never on sidewalks before you get home.

A big, well-dressed man commented on the light. "Yes, it's a flat light," he said, letting me notice his gigantic Leicaflex camera.

"What are you using?" he wanted to know. "Canon? Minolta?"

"Olympus," I mumbled. He had the blackest, largest 35mm reflex camera I have ever seen - even larger than an old Nikon Photomic with a motor.

"It cost me over 26,000 francs," he said without me asking him. "That's over three thousand dollars in your money."

I thought, "In my money?" If I had of had the tiny Olympus with me - 900 francs! - or the Minox, I would have showed either of them to him. It was a flat light like he said, and no amount of size or money - mine, his - could have made it any different.

Following the main text of this issue's feature 'The Missing Utrillo' you will find an proposition to buy a copy of the opening photo taken for the feature.

For quite some time all photos taken for each week's edition have been shot and saved as 'high quality.' These phots are also large - much too large to show online in Metropole. Larger also looks better - a lot better.