A Red New Year

For the Champs–Elysées and the Tour Eiffel

Paris:– Monday, 19. January 2004:– It seems hardly necessary to go through the routine of a weather forecast because the weather itself seems to have become routine. Cool, cold, wind, rain, sunshine, with a weekly repeat.

However there will be those of you wanting details, reassuring numbers, facts. This is the wrong place for this type of material. France has relative weather. Relative to its past, with the past having no reference to the present. However it happened before, it isn't going to be exactly the same next time.

As so often happens in winter, the weather in the south gets more attention because it gets more sunshine. Weather forecasters treat northern France with the same respect as Belguim. So we have a forecast of one half–hidden sunball near Nice and another near Biarritz. Nice for Nice.

Here, where we are, tomorrow's prediction calls for rain in the morning and clouds in the afternoon. Wednesday may turn out to be rain or even a bit of snow. Thursday may happen to have rain. All days are to have no sunballs peeking out from behind clouds – yet I bet there will be some.

In the temperature department tomorrow should be the warmest, with maybe ten degrees. After that it will be sixes and sevens. This was from tonight's TV-weather news. This morning's Le Parisien has opposing temperature predictions.

Café Life

This issue is 'doubled–up' with last week's issue, because Paris is in a season of vacuum, when not much is happening except for frequently poor weather. Clever people are either shopping, or hibernating.

Surprisingly, if the rains stop and the sun comes out on a weekend, as it did yesterday, Parisians leave their apartments en masse and stroll about the city's more picturesque areas. To see the Marais yesterday, its sidewalks looked like they were the centre of the 'winter sales.' Near Bastille, roller–folks were gathering for the Sunday edition of the weekly daylight 'rando.'

There is still a surprising amount of spoken Italian in the passing air. But mostly it is French that is heard. The right–bank Seine–side speedway is closed to traffic, and it has its habituals, but not many. Between four and five, cafés that have heated and wind–shielded terraces, see them fill up with chilled strollers.

No doubt if pushed, a lot could be written about this – like how one turns corners carefully because a narrow street that is slightly chilly, can have a stiff and cold breeze where it meets a wider boulevard. But this is just a price to be paid for trading snug hibernation for a bit of air, blue skies and weak sunlight.

So the city, and its residents who cannot stay inside, keeps its state of being lived–in intact, in a time of no big events or circuses. When these come – beginning this week – then the pause of January will be over and we will climb back on, to ride the ever–lasting roller–coaster.

Last Friday or Saturday I received an invitation to a press conference – to be held tomorrow – that will introduce the next edition of Paris' combined fashion and household design super–salon.

Other than the poster that was on view all over the city last week, I have had little advance warning about this event. It does not figure as a 'future event' in the city's program for December or January – at least not in the version I obtained.

Traditionally, January and September are the 'fashion' months – months when everybody involved in the business shows off their latest creations. During a five–day period about to begin, there will be no less than nine salons, mostly in two locations, and 200 other sites open to the design and fashion–conscious public.

In a way it will be like a super–vernissage. A half–million visitors from over a hundred countries are expected to attend, along with 16,000 journalists on hand to send words and images out to the entire world.

Balling the whole thing together has only occurred since last year. Yet it doesn't seem to be an effort directed only at professionals. There is, for example, the 'parcours' that involves the 200 other sites – with a invitation to visit the boutiques and ateliers of working interior decorators, designers, stylists, photographers, illustrators and editors.

For this even the Mairies of arrondissements, restaurants and cinemas, are on the list of places to visit. All together, too much detail to include here. Check out Paris, Capitale de la Création to find out a lot more.

This begins next Saturday at 14:00, for the first time in the history of Paris. The parade is to accompany the city–wide Année de la Chine. Organized largely by Beijing, and Paris and Ile–de–France Chinese associations, the parade will feature very big marionettes representing the twelve animals of the Chinese calendar, especially the outgoing goat and the incoming monkey. Also expect massive floats, many performers from China; and a dragon 50 metres long.