Goofing Off

The 'Roi du Café' as in coffee - in the Rue Lecourbe.

Part 11, Continued

Paris:- Monday, 11. March 2002:- Basking, yes, Parisians were basking like seals on hot rocks yesterday in the Luxembourg gardens, in the Tuileries, all over Montsouris, on the Champ de Mars, along the canal Saint-Martin and in the Jardin des Plantes.

If it wasn't a workday today, they would still be basking. For those who aren't working, there may even be some free chairs in the parks and gardens right now. Trees have sprays of green on them, if the light is right.

Tonight's TV-news has even noted that the swallows are back after a winter in Africa - and they are a month early. This is a sign of 'global warming' the TV-news says, adding that the swallows are fewer, because what man does to nature isn't kind to them. If you like swallows, don't turn that grassy field into a parking lot for a hypermarché!

But getting away from the recent past, the coming week's weather didn't look too good. There will be clouds and some of them will have rain in them. It will not be serious rain.

The Azores high is holding up well for a change, and this is allowing warm air to seep north from Africa and Spain. This should result in temperatures of 15 or 16 in Paris for a good part of the week. You may need an umbrella, but you can forget your gloves and scarf.

So sayth the weather oracle. Do not believe a word of it for more than the next 24 hours. My crystal ball's warrantee has expired. It is election time and anything can happen.

When I was in New York at the beginning of the year I was surrounded by Mets fandom, including being close to Shea stadium where it actually flakes off on the unwary. But despite searching in Queens, Brooklyn and Manhattan, I could not find a proper Mets' jacket, Mets' socks, or a Mets' seat cushion.

Whoever makes these items for the Mets has a horrible sense of color - so in the sense of 'proper' there was nothing to be had. Stadium seat cushions didn't even exist at all!

I returned to Paris Metsless. This situation has been partially reversed by becoming the owner of a high-altitude seat ticket to the baseball season opener at Shea Stadium on April Fool's Day, when I expect the Mets to wipe out the Pittsburgh Pirates.

I have never seen a big-time baseball game, so if the eventual 'report' about this seems a bit strange it will only be because the details may be vague to me. For example, the 'high-attitude' nature of the seat has me wondering if I'll need glasses, binoculars or a high-power telescope.

By good fortune I also managed to get an airplane seat ticket to match the baseball game ticket, and the two of them will permit me to witness New York's Easter parade as well. I hope this takes place at a reasonable hour of the day so I don't have to get up in the middle of the night.

Parades and sports aside, this trip is mainly meant to correct the 'non-stop-tour' mistake made on the last trip - when I saw so much New York that I got the impression I was in smaller-sized Central American country, with an inexplicable Times Square at its centre full of people from 88 countries.

On this visit there will be no list of 49 sights to see. There will be no 'list' at all. My visit to New York will include two Thursdays though. If Café Metropole Club members feel there should be meetings, then there will be. Write to me with suggestions.

Be warned, however, that my main intention is to catch up on sleep I have missed out on since Friday, 21. December 2001.

In Paris, the jolly and green-thumbed server-lady Linda Thalman has agreed to host the club meetings at the café La Corona on Thursday, 28 March and Thursday, 4. April.

Her notes from these meetings will be transformed into 'reports' that may be Transatlantic in nature. New members can expect to be properly inscribed into the members' booklet, even without the presence of the club's secretary.

During my recent so-called 'week-off,' I did not do any surprise reports, and I even forgot to go to the 'Beautiful Cow Show.' The 20 presidential candidates that I expected to have visited it, staggered their visits to co-inside with getting airtime on TV-news every evening.

As it was, the last issue was 'late,' and then it was another Thursday club day, and I forget what happened after that except for going to see an exhibition on a Monday - which I normally can't do.

Some readers may recall that there is a 'Café Metropole' sparkling wine waiting to emerge from the wings. One reason it is 'waiting' is that it is waiting for its label, and I worked on this. You can see some of the rejects for it on this week's 'Ric's Cartoon of the Week' page.

While these rejects become cartoons, the wine itself is really real wine. The problem with the label is to get a serious enough version without it looking like it belongs to some really serious magazine about Paris, which Metropole Paris is not.

This can be proved by this week's absence of the 'Au Bistro' column again. There is no excuse for this. I have had a whole two weeks to write 1800 words of Paris 'news,' but have run out of time, again, instead. Serious? Yes, this is serious!

'Café Life'

I would have seen some of Mexico's 'Art Populaire' in 1964 if certain third-country functionaries hadn't decided I should go to Spain instead of Mexico. So here it is 38 years later that Mexico comes to me - er, comes to Paris.

This exhibition is being held at the Bibliothèque Forney not because it known for its poster collection, but because it is also a centre for collected art déco and artisanal works. This is in the Hôtel de Sens - a construction begun in 1475 which was a pre-columbian date in Mexico, but has a not entirely vague relationship with pre-columbian heroic Spaniards.

The day before the exhibition's official opening date was reserved for friends and friends-of-friends with invitations, and they were not few either. I was a bit too late for the tour for journalists, so I got the full-crowd bump-and-jostle - which will probably be less evident when the public is admitted.

Mexico's 'folk art' is not terribly subtle, but it is very cheery if you are in the mood for bright colors. On hand were some artisans too, to demonstrate how some of the items are made - and there were also a large sprinkling of Spanish speakers to ask them questions.

According to the brochure for the exhibition, Mexico's 'folk art' for retail sale is somewhat organized, with training schools and marketing studies, and heavy-duty sponsors. It is not made by poor people in 'art-squats.' Just the same, it is something different for Paris - especially on cloudy days.

This exhibition continues until Saturday, 13. July. Open from Tuesday to Saturday; from 13:30 to 20:00. At the Bibliothèque Forney, Hôtel de Sens,1. Rue Figuier, Paris 4. Métro: Saint-Paul or Pont Marie. InfoTel.: 01 42 78 14 60.

According to my dictionary, 'stroganoff' means 'sliced thin and cooked with onions, mushrooms and seasonings, with a thick sour-creme sauce.' The unknown part is whether Count Stroganoff dreamed this up himself while he was kicking around at loose ends in his palace kitchen in Saint-Petersburg.

Beginning i the 18th century, the Stroganoffs collected beautiful objects for their household, financed in large part by their interests in the salt business. In 1742 Sergi Grigorivitch built the family a house near the corner of the Moïka quay and the Nevski Prospekt, which became a palace nine years later.