"I Just Want Some Red Shoes!"

Behind the glasses, from left, Chris Landry, Anita
Bennett and Judi Daunell.

'City of the Week' - Baton Rouge!

Paris:- Thursday, 25. April 2002:- Since Tuesday the weather here has been running true to form for this particular particle of the week. Once the morning smaze clears it is clear, bright and warm - far warmer than is 'normal' for April. It is also warmer than usual for May or June too.

But the forecast hasn't changed one whit. Tomorrow the temperature is to plunge to the 15s, and if tonight's TV-weatherman is right, water will also plunge down from the skies. Our feet will be skipping over or through what happens to plunges afflicted by gravity. Sunday may be even worse.

But that is not today, not this afternoon. When I arrive at the café La Corona, the terrace is littered with baskers - doing what people in Paris do really well - sitting around doing nothing while sprinkling their throats with beverages.

This will probably be disgusting news to all hard-working puritans, but there's a reason this town has 3000 cafés with outside terraces, and it isn't because they are display spaces for café tables and chairs.

For a big city relatively 'up north,' I bet this place has more outside places to sit down than the Sahara. There is some kind of law here that says certain blocks need café terraces edge to edge.

La Corona's stretch of the Quai du Louvre is perfect for sitting and watching hapless car drivers, sitting in an always traffic jam, going nowhere slowly, and cooking in their tin dogsleds. 'Ha-ha' you can think, even if they want to sit here and have a drink, there's no place to park.

Nearly nobody is inside the café. All the doors and windows are open, so it is not hot and stuffy, and the outside noises and gases can be easily forgotten.

Because I think there will be no members today I've brought a paper to read. First I do the secretary's little chores with the members' and the report booklets, and then begin reading about the guy who was found innocent of murder yesterday, after being convicted twice on the same deal and serving 15 years of hard time.

If the first paragraph about it wasn't so long I would have gotten to the second before Anita Bennett arrives. I must have gotten here early because it is 15:03.

As soon as I look up from my watch, Chris Landry is here too. I remember her too, from a year ago when she told me there are edible toads or shrimps in ditches where she lives.

There were a couple of meetings there when all these Mardi-Gras fans showed up and Baton Rouge didn't become the 'City of the Week' because I was concerned with the Washington Post's rotten advice to dress like a government worker in Paris, in order to 'fit in.'

Since my memory doesn't serve me correctly, I get some software to check out Baton Rouge's status. It really does deserve to be 'City of the Week' so that it what it is. At long last, its oversight is plainly visible!

We can forget the fallback of giving Sherwood Forest or Port Allen the award. Now Chris can go home in triumph and continue handing out print-outs of these reports to bewildered inhabitants there.

While I have been setting this right, Judi Daunell from Bakersfield, California has arrived for her second club meeting. Her first one was while I was in New York recently. She is surprised that she is well and truly registered as a club member already. 'Thank the server-lady.'

Anita was back in the USA too, but she's here again, and she's just made up her mind to go back to the Alliance Française because she forgot all her French during a week in Boston.

The three ladies talk about being in France. Parking is always short-term at Mont Saint-Michel because of the pesky tides. Winds can be hard on car doors. Chartres can be cold. Short distances on Michelin maps can turn out to be long, especially if you have to stop in every town with a cheese factory.

But when all three, in unison, say, "You can drink all the table wine you want" - this becomes the 'Quote of the Week' because it is true. You could drink all the table wine and there would still be some more.

Judi even claims you can drink the wine colored red, which she didn't believe before. What I can't believe is that they agree that 'Vieux Papes' for a 'buck forty-nine,' is pretty good stuff. "Carrefour has it," Anita says.

She adds, "I went to the Salon d'Agriculture and came back with 36 bottles." But not of 'Vieux Papes' of course.

Chris wants to know what kind of cheese Anita has on her plate. Before Anita can answer - because she's eaten the cheese - Chris says, "Do you want to see the twenty dollar shoes I got on the marché?"

She says she didn't believe the shoe guy and took the size 39 instead of the 38s the shoe guy said would fit. She has an extra 26 millimetres of toe-room in them.

Judi says, "I just want some red shoes!" Ahh, the shoe talk. It goes on. The maps come out in order to pinpoint some shoe place in the Forum des Halles, about a 10-minute walk away.