Spotlight On a Bender

Though a bit chilly, many café terraces are heated.

Was Sunday's Sunlight

Paris:- Monday, 25. November 2002:- After a few rapid blasts of bright sunlight during last Thursday's club meeting, the sky returned to normal which has been a sort of flat grey, lying damply on top of Paris like a soggy blanket.

Watching weather forecasts closely, I was not prepared mentally or logistically for yesterday's complete change-up - to an all blue November sky with a low sun slashing through it like a movie première spotlight on a bender.

This turned out to be a surprise 'bonus' day, because the program has returned to normal this morning. Grey, grey, flat grey, without relief or contrast. Periodically, the visible top of the Tour Montparnasse is 20 floors lower than normal.

The news and weather folks at France-2 TV have settled their strike, without bothering to mention what it was about, why they started it or why they've returned to work. The companion state station, France-3, is still on strike.

The settlement of whatever it was came in time for a series of days with weather warnings - mostly for the lower Rhône valley area. People living there were flooded twice within eight days.

Tonight, France-2's Isabelle said November's rain has been three times more than normal - the worst in 50 years. I don't know if she meant for France as a whole, or just the southeast.

But the situation is 'normal' in the sense that France is getting its normal November storms from the west, and from the south at the same time. Where the two fronts bang into each other - between Lyon and Marseille - the collisions have been more violent than usual.

A helper's helper of Metropole has supplied the URL for Info Climat, a source of current and historical weather info. This is useful for finding out what 'normal' is supposed to be, but I didn't have the time to study it in depth.

Paris' weather history is based on the reports from the France-Météo weather station on the modest heights of Montsouris, about 1.5 kilometres from Metropole's editorial office.

For a 'normal' month of November we can expect 2.5 days of fog - do low clouds count? - storms on a third of a day, sleet on 0.2 of a day, and 1.4 days with snow. Of snow?

Normally there should by less than one millimetre of rain on 10.1 days, and between five and ten millimetres on 1.4 days. Average for the month is 57 millimetres. But get this - maximum rain recorded on one day was 38.7 millimetres, and this was on 20. November 1965.

The average temperature for the month is 7.7 degrees, and the record high was set on 8. November 1982 with 20.3 degrees. The record low happened on 15. November 1983, with 4.2 degrees below zero recorded.

Now that I have found all this out, I can say with confidence that the predicted weather for the next few days will be boringly normal, with highs ranging from nine to maybe 11 degrees. The lows are not drastic. It should be partly nice on Wednesday and maybe Thursday. Its not much to complain about - for November.

Changing addresses has let press releases reach me only after they get re-routed from my old post office half a kilometre from my new post office, which is a five-minute walk from here.

So material for new events is arriving. Some of these are already listed in the 'Scene' column as 'coming events,' and others are complete surprises. I have about ten of these to add to the events column, but for this week 'Au Bistro' gets attention because of the strikes.

Café Life

While doing the 'Metropole Two Years Ago' thing below, I couldn't help but notice that 30. November is the second anniversary of my taking an unscheduled flop on the hard surface of the Quai du Louvre, while on the way to that Thursday's Café Metropole Club meeting.

Doing this caused my right knee to become fractured. This led it its being encased in plaster for a month and trying out a three-iron as a walking stick, and in early 2001 the knee was treated to three months of re-education.

The only reason for remembering this, is sometimes when I am springing up stairs like an agile gazelle in the métro it occurs to me to wonder when the trip-flop happened. For a long time after the incident, I felt the knee saying 'ouch' - but this has worn off so much that it has affected my memory.

I am pretty sure I am the only reader of 'Metropole Two Years Ago.' I only read it because it - and 'Metropole One Year Ago' - the two of them have to be updated every week. Some people probably think my days are full of wine and roses, but the reality is having to re-live the past.

Well, there were some wine and roses in the old days too, and doing the two 'years agos' brings some of these back. But if I could, I would be doing 'Metropole Two Years From Now' too - just to save myself replying to your emails asking when the fireworks will be going off at the Tour Eiffel on New Years Eve.

Actually, nobody is asking me this question. People tend to ask the server-lady, Linda Thalman, and then she asks me. Readers ask me where they can have Christmas dinner in Paris or where to go on New Years Eve - since they aren't going to the Tour Eiffel - unless it is to one of its restaurants.

And this brings me back to 'Metropole One Year Ago' - or two, or three - because looking back at previous issues at a particular time of the year can give you an approximate idea about what will be going on in Paris this year.

There are no fireworks planned for New Years Eve at the Tour Eiffel this year, and there might not be any until the last hours of Tuesday, 31. December 2999.

But festive dinners are definitely planned by a wide variety of restaurants for Tuesday evening, 24. December, Wednesday lunch on the 25th, and for dinner on Tuesday, 31. December 2002.

Last week was a poor one for Paris poster fans. There are weeks when the art directors of weekly magazines are off their feed, or my searches for likely candidates are not timed to coincide with the month's new issues of zippy and trendy magazines.

The city is turning out more posters for local affairs too. If these had respectable artistic qualities I would feature them - but less effort is made with these than the ones for cultural events.

This leaves the purely commercial posters. Except for rare exceptions, like last week's poster for 'Espress Yourself' by Lavazza, most purely advertising posters have the visual excitement of potatoes boiling. Not woth a glance let alone a second one.