Surprise Holiday

Warm night, soft lights, at this café on the Ile Saint-Louis.

For Metropole's 'Ed'

Paris:- Monday, 29. July 2002:- I am pretty happy with the weather. Again. Last week's forecasts were a little pessimistic in the beginning but the actual climate thumbed its nose at them and the mercury shot up to 34 yesterday, setting the best score for France.

This followed a Saturday with good weather too, making what Le Parisien has called a 'heatwave.' Like the waters in the Seine, short 'waves' are a big deal here. If the Seine had tides instead of occasional floods, they would probably be colossal.

What is there for one to say about good weather? What about - it was nice while it lasted? Already the temperatures have dipped a whole degree.

In principle, this Monday could be added to the 'heat wave' because fairly rotten weather was forecast last night and it neglected to show up.

This hasn't dismayed the forecasters though. They are persisting with their predictions for clouds to arrive tomorrow, to be accompanied with some rain - and some hail. Hail in July is something we don't see often. The temperature should slump too, way down to about 25.

The outlook for Wednesday is merely horrible. Tonight's weather map was grey with cloud, from mid-France up to where the world ends at the northern frontier. High predicted is a lousy 21 degrees. Probably because of the hail.

Thursday should see some clearing on the west, but with the thermometre falling off another degree. If this keeps up, by mid-August it will be zero in Paris. Beyond Thursday the outlook is nil.

Thursday will be, after all, the 1st of August and traditionally there is no weather in Paris in August because in theory there are no people here in the first two weeks of the month. The happy July vacationers who experienced fairly consistent good weather while away, will not notice that there is no weather here anyway.

Without air-conditioning, my inside temperature has not gotten much above 25 degrees, so when I did go out, it seemed a lot hotter than - oh, maybe hotter than Madrid in May.

Café Life

Throughout the past week I carried on with this sort of life in an abbreviated fashion because the other participants seemed to give the usual cafés a pass. Since they were not around for me to ask them why they had chosen to abandon Café Life, I do not have any other amazing tales to relate about it either.

But everywhere else I went in Paris I observed that café terraces were full of lucky people who managed to find free seats and tables to lean their drinks on.

This was especially true in the centre of the city where a lot of everybody was outside - at Paris Plage, on the other quays along the river, and draped all over the islands in the middle of it and on bridges across it.

The bateaux mouches seemed to be full to the rafters or whatever it is they are called on boats, and all the open tops of the double-decker sightseeing buses appeared to have standing room only.

While my area of town seems like everybody has closed their shutters and abandoned their usual street parking places, the Latin Quarter had throngs of mostly eager-looking visitors out for a good - and warm - night 'on the town.'

I went from Saint-Jacques through the Rue de la Huchette and it reminded me of Torremolinos on a busy night. All doors and windows open and the air full of warm smells of roasting meat and spices, with all of it lit by this yellowish light that is common in Paris.

But in the narrow Huchette there are all the bright neons too, and with telephoto eyes it looked like there were thousands milling around in a soupy daze of indecision about what to eat, or where, or when.

Much easier to understand all of the terrassians sprayed across the fronts of cafés, neither inside nor completely outside - with the kind of weather that makes the frontier between one and the other invisible.

A photo not run last week - of a line of people out in the street on the Ile Saint-Louis waiting their turns to chose from 45 different flavors of good ice cream - runs this week in its evening version.

For all I know they are the same people, waiting for the same ice cream. In fact, I re-shot many of the photos I took a week ago on Sunday afternoon, again on Saturday night. In warm weather Paris has two climates, night and day.

This week's 'flat hunt' is not even as exciting as last week's very short report about it. It seems as if everything has ground to a halt even though I kept at it.

As far as I can tell there are fish in the water, but my line is hanging limp and I think the worm on the hook must have gotten bored and wiggled off it and swum ashore to find something to eat.

The rental agency lady suggested on Friday that I try again next year, which begins in the last week of August.

There is going to be an interruption with the weekly issues of this magazine, perhaps until the issue scheduled for Monday, 19. August. My calendar tells me this will amount to skipping two issues. This is about what I have to do in order to have one week completely off, which is something I feel I need to do.

This coming Thursday's weekly club meeting will take place as usual on 1. August. As of this moment I do not intend to do the secretary's duties or whatever else they are on Thursday, 8. August.

I realize that this may upset the plans of readers who intend becoming members and members who intend to be at the meeting. All I can suggest is that if you are either of these, you can hold the meeting yourselve, without bothering about any of the club's 'rules,' because there aren't any.