The 'Yoohoo of the Week'

When One Is Needed

Paris:– Thursday, 29. September 2005:– Members at today's club meeting tried to find out how I came to be fascinated by the weather. Actually I wouldn't give a fiddler's fingernail for it because if it's raining I can stay home, if it's windy I can stay in bed and if it's foggy I can watch TV, and if I really do have to go out, I can put it off to some other sunny Sunday.

The sole reason for producing these so–called weather forecasts is so readers, who, for whatever reason, may be curious about what passes for weather in Paris. Me, I can look out the window. In fact, I do look out the window. Too bad there's so many leaves that I can't see the ground.

The weather, by and large, is boring. It mostly comes from the Atlantic and goes east, to oblivion. There can be minor variations but you get the idea of the main theme. Mainly, the climate is mild, which means, fortunately, boring.

Now that you are good and complacent, here's the forecast. Tomorrow will be rotten, very cloudy, maybe raining – but because of some fictitious 'high' will not move fast, so it will lurk I guess. A wind will shoot up the Channel at 60 kph, but not here. They didn't say so on tonight's TV–weather news. The high for tomorrow may be 20 degrees, maybe.

Then this wind switches to blow on France Saturday, more dark clouds attack the coast and maybe dribble over to here, and it'll be all gray, and feel rainy. If this isn't bad enough, a high temperature of 17 degrees has been forecast. Not jolly for the Nuit Blanche.

On Sunday there may be some random out–peeps of sun but mostly there will be clouds, being pounded in here by a 50 kph northwest breeze, and the whole rotten thing will be topped off with a 'high' of 14 degrees. Ski fans are alerted – some snow has been forecast for the Alps, around Haute–Savoie. Serves them right! Still September and already a grave danger of hypnothermia.

Since it is Thursday I ready myself for today's club meeting. First I find a warmer jacket because the summer that was lingering around looks like it has flown the coop and gone wherever weather goes after we're finished with it. All other preparations are like usual, such as opening the door and going down the stairs and getting stabilized on the sidewalk and pointed in the right direction, towards Chez Papa.

After this I turn on my auto–pilot and the rest is the habitual blur, right to the part where I am on the Pont Neuf admiring the stone Joes polishing the new stones, but without actually stopping to interrupt. Samaritaine is still closed. Hear me – Samaritaine is closed. For a long time. Maybe ten years! How long the newspaper kiosque lady right outside can keep open to sell me a Parisien on Thursdays – could be the 'Question of the Week.'

I see Monsieur Naudan going into the café and he offers me a drink – a glass of Champagne? – but I regret I must refuse because there will be club meeting notes to note. I regret this all the way to the back of the café's 'grande salle' where I see vast amounts of leftover frites, barely uneaten.

The club's tables are sparkling clean except for traces of salt crystals. Before I can ready the booklets member Karen Scott, from Lodi, New Jersey, is present and soon to be accounted for. Karen says there is a road sign near Lodi that says 'Welcome to Carlstadt, 1st US home of a kindergarten.'

Karen then says it is not her birthday but it is Heather Stimmler–Hall's birthday, but Heather is not here because she is down on the Riviera testing hotels for a guide book. We both know she is not testing ferries to Corsica because they are either on strike or they are not running because other ferry operators are under the impression that Corsica is temporarily lawless. Lucky it is out of season.

As if by magic Janet Spencer and Roy Kenyon arrive and nearly instantly become signed–in members. This couple comes to the club today from Chatburn in Lancashire, which is on the Liverpool side of UK a little way up north. Other than these two new members being from there, Chatburn is remarkable for nothing, except for becoming the 'City of the Week.'

Chatburn used to have a great industry involving textiles but it because abandoned long ago, about the time everybody in China was having a Great Leap Forward by making iron in their backyards.

On the other hand Chatburn's sorry fate causes me to make a little speech about how jeans made in China are now for sale on the Rue de Rivoli, which has contributed to the bankruptcy of Guillaume Sarkozy's company, Tissage de Picardie. He is the brother of the short minister of the interior, who is in favor of worldwide competition.

My speech is cut short, to everybody's profound relief, by the arrival of Fran Griffin, who comes to Paris from Neptune, New Jersey. Of course she knows Lodi, and now, Karen too. They form today's contingent from New Jersey. However they did not share the same transatlantic flight, via Detroit.

Shopping in Paris becomes a subject with Karen mentioning how much fun it is to stand in lines at Monoprix – "It' the Target of Paris!"