Ozone Dosen't Help

Gathered for the 'last ice cream' - Jefferey T. Spaulding, Laurel, Barry,
Tomoko and Steve - minus Lauren, again.

Our Big Stink

Paris:- Thursday, 9. October 2003:- I am glad to report here that Monday's whining snivel about unheated Paris paid off handsomely. On Tuesday morning heat was bravely filtering through the under-dimensioned plumbing into my two midget radiators, while the outside air temperature rose into a - admittedly low - double-digit zone, nearly fit for humans.

No point bringing up Tuesday's near-non-stop rain because the gutters swallowed it all and by Wednesday not a trace was left. That leaves us where we are now, at Thursday night, so here is the best forecast I can give you, based on scientific study on this morning's Le Parisien - not on strike today! - and this evening's TV-weather news.

For Friday we will have partly sunny skies and a high of 17 degrees. For Saturday we will have partly sunny skies and a high of 18 degrees. We get a bonus degree on account of Saturday being a weekend day.

Sunday's prediction is a proper dilly. One big sunball for most of France, including the Paris part of it, and a high temperature of 19 degrees is forecast. This is almost 20 degrees, and it is probably very much higher than is 'normal for the time of the year. It might not seem much to you, but nobody here is going to sneer at it.

Unofficially, Le Parisien also thinks Monday will be super too, with a replay of Sunday, but with sneaky clouds moving in from the southwest - which might bring another degree of warmth. But this is too long-range to be reliable. At this time of year we can't trust the northwest sector to remain indifferent to our good cheer.

Although it is not sunny today I leave the Métro at Saint-Germain so I can walk through the Quartier Latin to the clubhouse located in the café La Corona. After six months of bashing Parisian left-bank intellectuals by the neo-cons supporting President Bush's war on Iraq, the conservative French government is now blaming Parisian left-bank intellectuals for everything that they perceive to be wrong with France, going back to the Révolution.

Therefore, the purpose of my little stroll today is to see if there are any signs of ink blots or blood stains on the sidewalks or in the thousand year-old alleys that are sometimes called streets in this part of the funky western world.

But I see no wild-eyed lefties handing out leaflets, no barricades, no protestors of any kind, no police, no beggars, no starving artists, and hardly any illegaly-parked cars. There are the usual white-haired ladies walking their well-groomed miniature zuzu dogs, there are some shoppers wandering around with lists in hand, and there are the usual gaggle of art biz and publishing biz types hanging out at La Palette.

After the intellectual uproar of the lower Rue de Seine I pass into the desert of the place in front of the Institut de France. Its stone paving has so little contrast that it seems like smoothly-poured concrete. The Left Bank is playing it cool today.

So I cross the Pont des Arts and go to the club's café and say 'hiya' to the patron, Monsieur Naudan, the younger. He says nothing is happening. But in the café's 'grande salle,' there are about eight late luncheoners taking up the club's location.

Patrick, the club's 'Waiter of the Week,' has the situation under control and I hardly have my coat off before he has uprooted the civilians, collected their money and seen them out the door.

However, in a dashing move, before I can transfer the club's paraphernalia from a temporary table, members Laurel Avery and Barry Wright swoop in and take the secretary's spot, facing the room. Before I can make it a threesome, Tomoko Yokomitsu swoops in and does it first. it is a 'fait accompli.' So much for arriving five whole minutes early.

In the fraction of a second between the two sets of arrivals, Laurel and Barry have corralled Patrick and ordered 'chocolat liègois' from him. I hear him confirm that they know what this is, and by the time Tomoko has removed her coat, Patrick is back with two towering vases full of ice cream, chocolate and chantilly with a tube of cracker, saying, "My speciality - lots of chantilly!"

To cross the 't' or dot the 'i,' Tomoko switches her usual menthe and water order to grenadine and water, going from green to red.

Laurel and Barry's excuse is that they got lost looking for the W.H. Smith bookshop and had to hotfoot it back nearly all the way through the Tuileries to get to the club meeting on time. As Tomoko sips her very red grenadine, she tells Barry that specifically ordering a drink and dessert at the same time, is cheaper.

Laurel says she never ate ice cream when she was little, but seems to have no fear of her towering 'chocolat liègois' until she gets to a part that looks like vanilla ice cream. "What's this doing in here?"

Tomoko still thinks her turn with singles shopping last Thursday at Galeries Lafayette was a big hoot - "pas vraiment" - but is surprised to learn that the club's secretary heard her on Friday morning in an interview on radio France-Info and saw her on the France-3's Friday evening TV-news.

We all become aware that there is a huge stink in the club's area. It smells like burning rotten rope. Besides us, in the whole 'grande salle' of the café, there is exactly one other customer, sitting right outside the club's area, in the café's smoking section.

i get up to reconnoiter, and see that this joker is smoking what looks like an ordinary cigarette. Barry thinks he may be smoking a Moroccan 'Casa 7' cigarette, which he claims are made with French tobacco and camel hair.

Laurel is still studying the white ice cream in her 'chocolat liègois' with distaste, and then she abandons it. Barry says his is too much to eat all of it. Nobody bothers telling Patrick he may have overdone his specialty.

Then all the members discuss movies they've seen. All new movies start on Wednesdays in Paris and they are talking about last week's starters - which the club's secretary won't see until they are shown on TV, in about three years. But Barry did see an 'avant-premiere,' of a James Ivory movie called 'Le Divorce.' Tomoko says she was an extra in this movie.

The 'avent-premiere' was arranged by the American Library. Barry says there might have been 500 Americas in the audience for the showing at the Bercy multiplex. But he didn't think a lot about its characters, commenting that 'Santa Barbara types and their French equivalents may have something in common, but not much with us.'