Secretary Twiddles

While Waiter Burns

Paris:– Thursday, 10. November 2005:– The weather is taking a beating on the evening TV–news. There is too much news and nothing much is happening in the sky so the weather gets shortchanged, leaving fishermen, farmers and your club's secretary, in the lurch – which is like, the outside of an offside elbow – nowhere, empty–handed.

But, for you, readers, club members, Romans and fellow–travellers, I screwed up my eyes to fast speed and managed to capture a hint of what the sky, in the near future, has in store for us, here in downtown Paris.

Not only are today's maps liberally scribbled, Le Parisien neglected to make them in color. Appropriate then, for a cloudy and gray begin to Friday, gliding into a afternoon perhaps somewhat brighter, especially as we need not concern ourselves with winds wanging up the Channel at 60 kph. The high will remain steady at 13 degrees, which will be right on the button for here, now.

On Saturday the maps tonight didn't look too benign, with a huge swath of crumbly clouds reaching across the country from Amsterdam to Andorra. Unlike regular clouds these are expected to be very cloudy and under them we may have not more than 11 degrees of warmth.

Sunday, although I didn't actually see the entire details, is supposed to be not quite so cloudy, but with the same sort of cover as Saturday, north to south, like a big snake wearing a wooly sheepskin. Do not worry. If you happen to look up it will look like wool, not a snake, and besides the high is supposed to be 12 degrees, which will have us dancing in the streets if it is still legal.

Rather than write a load of nonsense here before letting you know that no members were at today's meeting, right at the beginning I will say that there were no members present for today's meeting so you can skip the rest of this, which is going to be short anyway on account of there being no members at today's meeting for a reason as yet to be determined.

However, before I – the club's self–appointed secretary – found this out, I put on my clothes and gathered up the club tools, and winged out the door, down the stairs, out of the building and loped down the sidewalk, eventually passing the piles of dead leaves piled up against the walls of the cemetery, before diving into the hole in the ground called Raspail.

The Métro train came along within a minute, and, all–in–all, I arrived at the club with lots of time to spare. Or I would have if the weather hadn't been so mild, which caused me to lark about on the Pont Neuf, counting the paving stones, and being breathing in the air.

At the club's café the 'grande salle' was pretty full, with about a dozen diners having a tardy lunch or an early souper, and some of them were doing it in the club's own area. I ignored them.

The 'Waiter of the Week' showed up with amazing dispatch and gave me a lecture about not ordering anything. "You didn't order anything last time, and you promised," he said accusingly. "You took up all the space, preventing paying customers from giving me lots of tips," he almost added.

I don't keep track of these 'Waiters of the Week,' because other than the café's regular ones, these jokers come from 'waiter central' and have no idea of how many members of the club have left generous tips of legal tender coins, weighing no doubt, hundreds of kilos.

Pretty soon I am reading the latest in the ongoing Sarkozy saga and about tranquil nights in Essonne, plus other faits divers of a diverse nature, such as a story with no facts about how Paris is reassuring tourists. Without saying a word about possible curfews here, it says we are not drenched in 'fire and blood.' In true fact, it is not even raining.