The Weather News

Having a final drink before the last métro of the night.

Is All There Is, So Far

Paris:- Monday, 15. April 2002:- This is about the time of year when Easter usually happens, but for some arcane reason probably known to the part of mankind that follows events at the Vatican, Easter was moved ahead two weeks this year, leaving its weather stranded where it usually is - in mid-April.

This means, for those who overlooked Easter itself, we at least have the weather for it, even if we don't have the long weekend that goes with it.

For newcomers, I should explain that Paris often has its spring for two weeks in either February or March, or both, then has a last spurt of starker weather at Easter for all the Italians who come to Parigi so they can wear their spiffy winter togs and make all Parisians feel shabby.

For a reason that will probably seem unclear to you, newcomer or not, I spent my Easter in New York - which had Paris' Easter weather - and this is something Italians should note - if Easter is early and happens to have spring weather, they might be able to catch the appropriate winter weather for their clothing in New York instead.

Well, that's all in the distant or near past anyway. In the here and now, Paris is having late-winter early-spring weather like it always does at this time of year, near the calendar end of spring. If Gene Kelly still came to town, he would be wearing a raincoat for his 'dancing in the rain.'

Not that it rains much, but proper raincoats are also pretty warm - and this is what you need for temperatures mid-way between 10 and 20, in the best part of the day. If you are out during the dark part of the day, consider walking fast.

The forecast for the coming week is not something I want to hazard, so I'll tell you that Le Parisien thinks it will stay pretty much the same - with highs around 15, if you are lucky, and many cloudy periods. Sunny periods will be lurking close-by, but even if they show up, temperatures won't change much.

As usual, I will go out during any of the eight sunny periods of each day to take the next issue's photos. I don't this to dupe you into thinking it is always sunny in Paris. I do it because I don't like getting wet either.

'Café Life'

A Poor Excuse

Early in the past week, I was severely jetlagged on account of trying to do an issue right after getting off a transatlantic flight, so you can't expect me to have experienced anything significant in the 'Café Life' line.

I'll be the first to admit this is a poor excuse, but I also need to say I was in cafés a lot because I got seriously café-deprived in New York. I even had the wild and crazy idea of launching a chain of Paris-style cafés over there because the place would be a whole lot more comfortable if there were cafés on every street corner, to satisfy the basic needs of life.

But doing something like that might be a lot of work, and even if getting rich out of it was the result, there would be no time for 'Café Life' - so why go to the bother? It's easier to just get on a plane and jet back to Paris.

I will conclude this moan by saying that if you are in New York and Esteban's Café Greco seems a little tame after the umpteenth $2.25 cup of espresso there, all you need to do is go around the corner and walk a block to have a wide choice of joints that have 'Cuban sandwiches.'

While I was away, the gang at the Bouquet decided to start having literary meetings in it. I didn't know this when I accidently sat down next to the very famous Irish poet, whose name I never caught because all the other café regulars who weren't at the lit. meeting were practicing for 'shout night.'

Sometimes the people who go into Paris cafés do not do so to stare morosely at their filthy beers or little balloons of so-so wine. Sometimes, nobody knows why, everybody decides they would rather shout at everybody else in the bar, while drinking with carefree abandon

Actually, evenings of this type are fairly common in the Café Bouquet because one of the regulars always shouts - every night except on Sundays when the place is closed. Luckily he never goes to the Sunday back-up café, so it would be possible to hear the sports news if they ever turned on the TV's sound.

The others at lit. night were having a fine time, planning for the reading the following night - on Thursday. They said they were going to meet in the Bouquet really early, go to the reading together - the Irish poet had to do the 'reading' there - and then they were all going to go to a fine restaurant where loud talk is permitted, and get totally wasted.

These things always happen on Thursday nights, which is the night I do the Café Metropole Club 'reports,' so I never get to do the Thursday night lit. reports instead.

When I mentioned this, Dimitri said everything good happens on Thursday nights, and he really missed going to his 2CV club meetings because these are held on Thursdays too.

In fact, everybody else could think of some Thursday thing they'd rather do than have wild talk, poetry readings, meals in good restaurants, and copious drinking - along with music and dancing if it was all done in the Vin des Rues, across the street.

On Friday, Dennis called me early in the noon section of the day and asked me to come over and help his new PC get online. While I was trying to figure out the charms of Windows-X, he gave me a blow-by-blow account of Thursday's lit. evening's proceedings - which went off as planned from the sound of it, and I got thoroughly disgusted.

In compensation he lent me a book, written by a starving writer named John Fante about being a starving writer named Auturo Bandini in LA in 1939, for which Charlie Bukowski had written a preface in 1979, which I guess was after his own starving-writer days.

None of this is quite true, but it is how Bandini's story goes. Reading it is almost as good as being at lit. night at the Bouquet.