The Calm

Before the Rentrée

Paris:– Monday, 29. August 2005:– You should see the weather guy on France–2 TV news. He does look smug. His is, now that just about everybody and their elected representatives are back pounding away at the old millstone, he is really proud to be giving us beautiful summer weather.

I can't say it is 'better late than never.' There has been no unbroken spell of ultra–hot days and none of the ultra–cool. Instead there has been a pretty steady variety of days that have been warm enough, with a lot of sunshine and not too many clouds or rain. And once in a while there have been days when the temperature went over 30 degrees, but that's what they were – individual days rather than any series.

So I can say, from the view of an urban mensch, that summer has been fully agreeable. I may even remember it for having the best all–round weather in recent memory.

Only just a few days ago, and even last week, there was a morning nip in the air that announced that fall is here. The temperatures were going down to 12 overnight, even if the days have been comfortable with highs jiggling around 22–25 degrees.

Yesterday, which I write about elsewhere in this issue, was stunningly brilliant. It is unheard of for the day that everybody is supposed to have left the sand behind, to be pleasant. When you come back from holidays you are supposed to get drizzle. Not yesterday.

Okay, now to smugness. Tomorrow has been forecast to be all sunny, just about everywhere in France. Right here in downtown Paris the temperature is predicted to be 29 degrees. Earlier these predictions regularly fell short by a couple of degrees, so I expect 31.

With a few clouds edging into the western tip of Brittany on Wednesday, again most of the rest of France will be sunny, and the temperature for Paris may be 31 degrees. The change is come on Thursday, when there may be more than a few clouds around, but the temperature is expected to hold up, with a high of 26 degrees. Not too shabby at all.

Eyes focused tightly on TV–screens, this week Météo Jim sends an informative note about weather not here, but down south Gulf of Mexico way.

Sirius and his friends have returned to the kennel for a while; hopefully for the rest of summer. The end of the week was marked by slightly higher temperatures and clouds. Not just any clouds but those of a change of seasons. High towering clouds and darker roiling ones that indicate a cold front has come. The front is still a few days away but it is giving notice that the dream of August is coming to an end. Rain shadows will cover Pommeland for most of the coming week. This brings us to the event of the week – Hurricane Katrina.

Katrina paid a brief visit to the southern area of Le Pays de Pamplemousse and the city of Miami. Maybe Katrina was impressed by what she saw for she is now heading for the City of the Big Easy – New Orleans. As of Sunday, 28. August, 10:38 PM, the storm has winds of 165 mph and a storm surge of 28 feet. This means that the point where high tide falls, the wind will drive the water 28 feet higher above that point. It is measured vertically, meaning the waves will be 28 feet above your head. How far inland the waves will go depends on the slope of the land. In some cases, it will drive the water hundreds of feet inland.

Café Life

If I don't get Metropole's events online soon I will be able to copy everybody else who does them. But I am only joking of course. I used to grit my teeth and do an events column every week. Maybe I need to fire me and get an unpaid intern to do it for free. People are so unreliable.

Mentioned above, the weather was perfect yesterday. I had to go out into it and wander around, get some Cs and air and see up into the sky a long blue way. Instead of news I've put this on the 'Au Bistro' page, partly to hold some extra photos. Click here to go there.

News has just arrived of a new world record being set yesterday at Arthemonay in the Drôme. The AFP report is highly technical, using all sorts of words I've never seen before, so this account will be approximatif. Amateur woodchopper Dominique Figuet went up a big tree and on a platform 37.6 metres above the ground, he cut some wooden thing – a ticket? – in 1:50:13:05. That is, one hour, 50 minutes, 13 seconds and 5/10s.

This feat was witnessed by a huissier, Me Christian Joubert, from Romans, also in the Drôme. This 'billet' that was hacked out of Beech wood with a hatchet, was 1.32 metres long, or wide, or high. The organizer, Bruno Ollat, is going to lodge the details with Guinness, because the existing record of 32 metres and one hour, 24 minutes, set in Switzerland by another French woodchopper, was broken. Yesterday's champion, Dominique Figuet, a maintenance technician, broke the record once before, in 2004. A couple of weeks ago we nearly had chuckwagon races. I guess NFL football will be next.

The so–called report about last Thursday's club meeting was headlined 'Cool of the Week.' This was a reference to a variety of cool subjects and objects, including Bb's shoes which popped up on a chair to get their photo taken. You are reading a magazine whose club members choose to wear Swiss technology shoes, in public. Cool.