Fleeting Heat

Pots kept hot for treaure hunters on Montmartre.

The Double-Issue That Isn't

Paris:- Monday, 13. October 2003:- Readers who were concerned about the 'big chill' I was having last week will be relieved to know that it ended as soon as I closed last week's issue, somewhat late, but somewhat early last Tuesday.

However, after being toasty for 6.5 days, I chanced to notice earlier - this morning - that my radiators are no longer warm. I fear that it was merely a test, carried out while the outside temperatures were elevated, and now that they are not - not predicted to be - the test is over. It proved that the radiators work if they have warm water in them.

And now that they don't, it has been proved that radiators don't radiate much if they do have cold water in them. The obvious solution to the 'test' situation is to stay in bed, under piles of blankets, and send out scouts every couple of days to 'test' the radiators to find out if they are still undergoing tests.

Before you take this to heart, you need to know that yesterday was an unusually warm and bright day in October. I think everybody who wasn't testing their radiators in any way was outside, enjoying Paris.

Last night's TV-weather news forecast for today wasn't brillant, but it turned out to be like Sunday. Tonight's TV-weather news prediction for tomorrow seemed to be less than what we had today, but it called for mostly sunny skies and temperatures around the 20 degree mark.

As the week goes on, mostly sunny is supposed to turn into nearly all sunny. This pleasant state of meterological affairs has its downside, and it will translate into lower temperatures. Not drastic, but inching down to 17, then 16, then 15, and so on. I know we don't have 'inches' here, but there is no appropriately similar metric verb. We never go 'millimetring' anywhere.

Café Life

I had an odd week. The outside temperatures warming up at the same time as the inside radiators coming to life might have has something to do with it. But I think I started off the week with a deficit and I never caught up.

One of the signs of this was having a short Tuesday. For no reason known to me I thought it was worth starting a 'Parislog' and got one going at a good clip, but I think it was a sort of diesel-effect. If I came close to the keyboard, my fingers tapped the keys. I think it used to be called auto-typing.

Then I decided to do nothing. Right - I decided to do no separate issue this week. Just do one of the double-week issues - add a 'Café Life' and a couple of posters and call it a day.

I always watch the weather, and my subconscious says that we are going to have one beautiful day in autumn, and that will be it. This week's nearest thing to it was yesterday. Normally I work on Metropole all day on Sunday, but I thought if I worked on it on some other all-days, then this week's feature would be about Sunday in Paris in the fall.

So, while waiting for the weekend I decided to bring the Café Metropole Club member's list up-to-date. I think I spent three or four hours on this last Wednesday, and at the end I'd done a quarter year's-worth of meetings. I should say I did this much in two sessions.

But I actually did some other administrative chore on Wednesday too, and that was something gotten out of the way. In the evening I had a short 'Café Life' session and then spent all day Thursday with the club meeting and its report. This is what Thursdays are.

Friday was a day of bits - looking without luck for posters to photograph, and not, when I think of it, doing much else. Oh sure, I go shopping, wash clothes, take care of routine chores, and I forget that these add up even if they aren't worth mentioning.

But every night the TV-weather news forecast was telling me that Sunday was going to be 'the day.' By Friday I knew that it could tie in nicely with this week's iMail feature, but I wanted to get the season's perfect autumn day too if Sunday was to be its day.

Even if it wasn't, I was getting worried about the weekly posters. There didn't seem to be any good, new ones around. The city sometimes uses its weekly poster allotment to advertise city services, like the 'Week of the Associations.' The poster for it wasn't brillant.

Yesterday arrived, and it was close to its prediction. So, of course, Dennis of the Daguerreotypistas called and we went and have some 'Café Life.' He'd just returned from California - on election day - and that was a topic, but minor compared to other ones.

There was still a lot of day left when I left the Métro at Abbesses. I was fairly aware that it was the weekend of the grape harvest up there, but I didn't realize that it was also the weekend of the 'puces' on the hill too. I think a quarter of Paris was up on the Butte.

Montmartre is great if the weather is good, no matter how crowded it is. I guess I'm used to it, considering that I wanted to get a photo of the church right in the middle of the mob. And this is all I wanted, so I kept on going north, and went down by the vineyard and past the 'Lapin,' and all the way down to the Métro.

This I took towards La Chapelle, to hook up to the Porte d'Orléans line, to ride back to Odéon. But the correspondence didn't work, so I had to look around for an alternate station in the Rue Ornano. At Odéon I got a couple of posters and then I went up to the Luxembourg.

There I was disappointed. A bright fall day in October, but the leaves were not cooperating by changing teir colors. Everything else was okay - everything but getting the photos I was hoping for.