Paris:- Thursday, 2. January 1997:- Today is not a holiday so I am working as usual. It is easy to tell it is colder because my fingertips feel dead. When the train slides along the heights overlooking Suresnes between Saint Cloud and La Défense, the gloom starts much nearer than on Tuesday and there is no ghostly Tour Eiffel, no tower at Port Maillot, nothing beyond the front edge of the Bois de Boulogne.

As I am intending to check out the annual after-fête 'Sales' today, the planned grand tour will be abbreviated. It looks like Siberia or Greenland out there and all sensible people will be in warm and brightly-lit department stores and other nice shops picking up bargains made in Paris.

At La Défense, there is again a lot of people, but maybe not quite so many as on New Year's Eve. There are no long lines of travellers waiting to buy métro tickets. There are no hordes jamming onto the train - so I can see that last year's métro posters are not yet entirely gone, and the new year's 'Sales' posters are not all present.

I must have been thinking about something else, because the Etoile stop comes very quickly. As usual, I get lost in the tunnels looking for the shortcut to the centre of the Etoile and follow the usual signs out to the top of the Champs-Elysées - and there is the usual 'other' stairway which goes down into its own tunnel under the traffic to the circular island in the middle. It is as low-ceilinged and ill-lit as usual. I always remember this, but never, ever, how to get to it.

I walk around the Arc de Triomphe, to the Grande Armée side and back up until I am almost in the traffic, but there is nothing through the camera's viewfinder except two vertical columns, so I march straight forward to the Eternal Flame. The avenue dips away from here and this makes no great shot but I am aware that there are a good many other visitors coming up for a quick look, a snapshot, a bit of video. There is a bit of glacial wind coming up the avenue and nobody is spending a long time hanging around - and neither am I.

It is calmer today; this is a new year and maybe drivers are being a bit cautious and I do not get nearly hit crossing the Champs-Elysées on the white stripes with the green man shining at me. There is little color, everything is this really cool blue-grey, with fringes of weak frost and there is no litter from the other night, no empty Champagne bottles in the gutters.

Madame of the toilets in the Drugstore is not quite so gruff as usual but maybe she recognizes my hat and the two-franc piece I dump into one of her two little baskets after asking which one is the gent's. The brasserie there is pretty full and there is the usual bustle of people passing through, somewhat like an extra glitzy métro station that sells Cartier watches, and I won't guess to whom.

The mayor, Jean Tiberi, has a new 'Bonne Année' poster in the panel outside the Paris Tourist Office and I pop it into the camera's flash-memory, without using the flash, and ride in through the motorized revolving door - don't push it! - and get the monthly program magazine and the monthly 'Paris' magazine from the receptionist, who is dressed for an Arctic outing, on account of sitting directly behind the revolving door. A 'Bonne Année' to her and I'm out in about 90 seconds total, after noting in passing that the place is filled to the rafters, probably by people buying guided tours to the steam baths.

If I wasn't doing this little first tour of the year for Metropole, I could do it with my eyes closed and I wish I could because they are starting to water as I head east down the avenue to the métro at George V.

Then I am thinking about something else again in a crowded métro wagon because without noticing all the stops in between it is suddenly the Saint-Paul station and I get ready too soon for the Bastille station.

This is easy; just get off the train and find a nice un-defaced window and shoot the basin de l'Arsenal in all its murky greyness and barges and then amble a long way through a lot of tunnels to make a connection for the Opéra. And that's it. The canal at Bastille, without even going outside, is the end of today's first tour of the year.

Oh-oh, it's not. I forgot I got off the métro earlier at Palais-Royal to check out the Louvre. Funny; how could I forget it?

I take the underground route direct from the métro to - what is this? This underground marble mall, where all the shops sell Italian ties. It is a maze, and for about the fourth or fifth time I cannot find any way that will bring me straight through and up to the Cour Napoléon, instead of coming to the surface way out west by the little Carrousel Arch. Along the way I go through two security checks, one of which gives priority to people going to the métro, holding up the mob coming from the métro going to the Louvre.

There has been an army of these security people at all entries to everything around the city, and a lot of them are new on the job. I think they were rushed into place without a great deal of training and some of them are clearly flustered - especially with the sort of crowds an attraction like the Louvre is attracting like honey, especially in this weather. Little do I know what lies ahead.

Ah daylight, as weak as it is, as cold as it is! I can see there are some people over by the Pyramid and it means I'll get a shot out of this - not detour; because I planned it - but this excursion into the elements. It would be stupid to be the only person here, feeling foiled again.

Over I go and the closer I get the more amazed I am. There are thousands of people standing in lines like a huge Chinese New Year's snake, in the horribly bitter freezing cold, waiting to get into the Louvre! Maybe not actually thousands, but they must be in the higher hundreds. The line seems endless - and more are continually pouring into the place out of the Richelieu Passage from the rue de Rivoli. Don't they know they could be underground and warm? Maybe lost too, but warm.

The reflecting pools around the Pyramid are not reflecting because they are frozen, but the fountains are spraying through the ice, and a dead Champagne bottle is lying there. Many people are breaking out of the line to photograph it.

Do those waiting seem discouraged? As they come out of the Richelieu Passage, I hear groans, but I don't see anybody turn around and go straight back to the Palais-Royal for a hot chocolate; no, they join the end of the line. It may be cool, but it is calm - maybe a chance to catch up with exchanges of impressions to while away the time.

In July I have never seen so many people here all at once. And so many Italians, and a few Spanish too; but I heard Italian everywhere on New Year's Eve too. It makes me think of warm things when I hear it; even today. It is probably just as cold in Venice now and with this in mind I take the Richelieu Passage to the métro to go and look at some water at Bastille, although it is not the same thing.

I wonder why I forgot this part, when it was the most impressive? It doesn't matter, it is in now and it doesn't matter either if it makes the tour out-of-order. There aren't any rules for touring Paris.