Ho and Hum

Followed by Nothing

Paris:– Monday, 3. January 2005:– The coming weather promises to be dull no matter how much spin I think I can get away putting on it. To begin with we will be having 'ho' weather and it will be followed by two days, at least, of 'hum' weather.

Pretty much like Le Parisien predicted this morning, tonight's TV–weather news has forecast basically sunny skies for Tuesday. These will not be 'real' sunny skies and they might not be all day long exactly, but the word is that the outlook for AM is to be much like PM – both sort of sunny. With an expected temperature of 9 degrees, this will be a day of absolutely average everything for January.

'Hum' starts on Wednesday. Up here in the north there may be some sunbeams along the Channel, but a swath of clouds will obscure the sky over Paris. On account of this cover we can expect the day's high to be 10 degrees.

On Thursday 'hum' turns half to 'ho' again, with the clouds being split between the south and the north, leaving an apple pie pointy wedge of semi–sunny over our heads. This will happen so gently that the temperature will refuse to move in any direction and stay nailed to 10 degrees.

Le Parisien calls what we will have on Thursday 'green rays.' Well, they say, 'or gray' too, so I guess that if you really want the 'green' rays you'll be better off seeking them in Ireland.

Café Life

It looks like I've mucked this issue up. I was sailing nicely along, late as usual, when the evening's TV–news changed its format and I had to wait an extra half hour for the weather fantasy. Since then I've been hitting the wrong keys a lot.

Tap, tap, backspace, tap, tap, tap. Then the phone rings. Since I need a break I pick it up. Thirty minutes later I'm back to hitting the wrong keys again. To try and get up to speed I switched to the bottom of this page and tried typing in the 'countdowns' nonsense, sort of as a limbering up exercise.

I had forgotten that today, 3. January, is almost a total loss as far as significant anniversaries go. There I went putting in all these birthdays when this is the anniversary of deaths.

At the same time as I am mistyping that stuff I am trying to keep a part of my brain free for dreaming up what I'm going to write here. Instead of anything wonderful coming to mind I am wondering why there should be an issue this week.

There should be an issue this week so I can tell you about all the things about Paris that you might want to know. There are quite a number of them. But I don't have them organized right under my fingertips, and my fingertips aren't hitting the right keys with any accuracy.

Tune in next week to see if my next attempt to put out a proper issue of this weekly magazine about Paris is more successful than this week. While I'm here, I sincerely wish all readers, fans, club members, and the idly curious, a darn good New Year.

The official word is that the coming Soldes d'Hiver will begin on Wednesday, 12. January and continue for a bit more than five weeks until Tuesday, 22. February. There are 9 days left to get ready. Bring your piggy bank and a hammer.

Headline of the Week

Last Friday's Le Parisien scores an outright win again with its "Comment les Français vont réveillonner" headline. The sub– head said the French would be on the Champs–Elysées, or sitting in front of their TVs, which would be showing prerecorded festive shows, again.

The last club meeting's 'A Packed Café' club report is still bubbling and gay. There were more than enough civilians in the café for the traditional 'Group of the Week' photo, but none of them were happy members.