Non-News of the Week

The terrace of the club's café - La Corona.

The Club's Overlooked 4th Birthday

Paris:- Saturday, 18. October 2003:- Your Metropole Paris Internet magazine's Café Metropole Club may not have any 'rules' anymore, but it is establishing long-standing and hallowed traditions - like forgetting its own birthdays.

I am not looking way back. Just looking at last year is bad enough. One year ago the 'special' birthday feature, dated 17. October, mentioned that the 'real' birth date of the club is 14. October 1999, which was on a Thursday of course. This year 14. October rolled around and was long gone before I chanced to notice this date that marks the first club meeting of all time.

Subconsciously I have been worrying about straightening out the mistakes, flubs, typos and wrong meeting numbers in the member's booklets, and consciously I started to fix them. This effort is far from complete, but attempting to do it obscured the date of the anniversary itself.

And before you ask, I am not trying to get out of bringing a birthday cake to the anniversary club meeting. Even if we did not know it during last week's meeting, last Thursday saw the Café Metropole sparkling wine being poured during a club gathering for the first time. This was by pure chance, like so many other events that make attending club meetings so exciting, even if nobody knows why until after the fact.

Since this is not a club meeting 'report,' you will find the weather forecast in its usual place on the week's 'Café' page. Actually it doesn't matter where it is because it is just as wrong many of the official forecasts here. Usually, and I say this guardedly, the weather is better than its forecasts and predictions. It's like something nice that jumps out of a birthday cake. Be surprised!

Or it might have ben the 208th. Whichever it was, it means the total number of meetings add up to more than a month of Sundays. To be precise, any number over 31 does this, and the number of meetings is approaching the 'seven months' of Sundays' region.

The number of readers who read the virtual online magazine 'Metropole Paris' and who have joined the Café Metropole Club during its meetings in Paris since 1999 passed the demi-magic number of 500 about a month ago.

This is a stupendous figure - considering that some members have come all the way from the other side of the world - and it represents 'new' members. Overall attendance at club meetings has been much higher, because there are members who return annually, and some even turn up every other week, like the 'Waiter of the Week' does sometimes.

The club's 'secretary of the week' has not always been the same one, but few noticed this because he was replaced by Linda 'Dancing' Thalman, who is sometimes known as the 'server-lady' - which means Web server, and not 'Waitress of the Week.' In fact, the club has never been blessed with a 'Waitress of the Week' because the club's café has none to supply.

In the past year the club has had many amazing highlights, which are reflected by the titles of the club 'reports.' Forexample, who will ever forget the 'First Country 'City of the Week' report? You don't remember it? Well, how about the 'Elvis Costello is Not a Club Member, Yet' report. These are not made up. They really happened, or somebody said them. They were either 'first' or true.