Metropole Paris:- Monday, 3. March 1997:- Last week while I was supposed to be having a good time going around Paris feasting my eyes on its treasures and hanging out at the Salon de l'Agriculture stuffing my gob, I was wasting my time worrying about words that are being thrown about with complete disregard for their meanings.

Nearly thirty years ago I got a job in Munich as a 'Gastarbeiter.' I was one 'guest-worker' out of millions at the time. I did the same work for the same pay, and no distinction was made about my origin.

There were Germans who did not like us Gastarbeiters very much and were willing to say so, but most of the Germans I worked with, only wanted us to work as hard as them - or as was often the case - party as hard as them. (Germans know how to party, even at work. Or they did back then.)

After work, a small group of us would often go to a local bar between the factory and the tram line, and knock off a couple of extra beers if we had been working extra hard and hadn't had enough time to drink on the job. I didn't learn German at these sessions because Didi spoke with quite a Bavarian accent, and Jesus was no help for my Spanish as he was from a deep pocket of Andualusia close to the 16th century.

Didi was big but didn't hold much beer so Jesus always won the table-top football, even with me as a partner, which was about the same as not having one. Sometimes Didi would get overtired and we would carry him all the way to where he lived, because it wasn't far. Jesus lived in a dormitory because he sent most of his pay south, to keep his sisters in school.

Like Jesus I had to go to Ettstraße and have my papers fixed up there. When I got to Hamburg, I had to go to a similar place and it was the same routine - a bit like being in a third-world United Nations of busstations.

In Hamburg I could have worn a white collar if I'd felt like it, but I never got a German identity card because I was an 'Ausländer,' and I had a special stamp in my passport that had to be renewed occasionally. The situation was different though; there was no 'Jesus' in the office. If I told my fellow workers that I was a 'Gastarbeiter', they would say I was crazy. They had never had to go to a certain office at the police headquarters, called the 'Ausländeramt.'

In France I have been to several similar offices over the years and I have rubbed shoulders with other people who had business to conduct in these places. It means for me, unlike the naturalized French, that when a mayor of a French town says she is going to try and throw the 'immigrants' out, she means me.

French friends will say, oh no, not you - but they have never had to go and apply for a permit to live in this country; in fact in a recent burst of administrative spirit, there have been recent stories of city halls handing out French passports on the same day! (I don't know anybody who has actually succeeded in doing this; so far it is all hearsay. But I wonder if the administration isn't trying to get rid of the French too.)

I am not looking forward to getting my residence permit renewed because it took 18 months last time - by the time you get it, it is half over.

In order not to become illegal, it is wise to apply for a new residence permit a fair amount of time before the old one expires. When you do this, you have to hand in the one that is still good, and you get a temporary one. The last one I had; it had to be 'renewed' six times.

In a fit of French logic, if the proposed 'Loi Debré' becomes law, anybody found waltzing around France with dubious papers - will have their 'real' passport confiscated. This will insure that one has to stay in France until... when?

I don't know if it is true for all countries, but I do not 'own' my passport. It is merely a travel document loaned to me by the government of a country where I have citizenship, and the passport is their property. One thing you are supposed to do if you lose your passport, is report its disappearance to the nearest consulate.

I wonder what they might do if one tells them who has it?

There are no 'coming events' this week as I was tied up with other matters. Like doing the French income taxes.