 The big wet plonks in a corner of the bedroom ceiling were again the first thing I heard when I woke up. Several letters, one of them registered, and call after 'phone call over three years have done nothing to get the "syndic" responsible for the upkeep of this building to fix the hole in the roof over my flat.
Books remain piled on the floor rather than being exposed to more damage in the next rainstorm, but as a humble tenant I'm not allowed under French law to get the repairs done myself. The landlord would be quite happy to do so, but the simple task requires the agreement of everybody else who owns apartments in this part of Losserand Street.
Four audits have been done since 2000, the sole concession by the syndic, who's entitled only to three anyway. The most competent fellow to climb through the trapdoor on the landing outside told me it would cost about 550 euros (700 dollars). The last bunch of layabouts who "mended" the chimneys one baking summer forgot to cap them properly and there are also hairline but serious cracks in the concrete seating of the chimney-stack.
I was in the top bunk, which is the Kid's when she comes, but last night she moaned that it was too hot up there to sleep and made me swap.
I could have killed her this morning. Switching my brain on takes a good hour at the best of times, but in the living room it was freezing and in the bathroom my teeth were chattering when I shaved. The little monster! I told her last night that she could turn the heating right down, but I did not say she could switch it all off. By the time she emerged, a couple of hours later, the temperature was back to endurable.
But that's how she is. As capable of taking a cold shower in midwinter as she is of luxuriating in what she calls a "Norwegian bath" in August. Above, she's enjoying one of the world's most unusual pools, and it's a very warm early March morning.
That was in KwaZulu-Natal almost two years ago, when we spent one marvellous night and day at what may be one of the most expensive lodges in South Africa's most impoverished province. There is a protective barrier, because the water plunging out of the pool falls down an almost sheer cliff-edge, hundreds of meters deep.
 One of her problems with Africa now is that it's far too hot for her, she says. All of it. In this other picture, she's loving the aftermath of the most ferocious storm Senegal ever threw at us, in August 1997. It was very hot that month and the peasant farmers of the region were rejoicing at that rain, which came after months of drought and proved to be the harbinger of the salvation of their crops.
The rains were weeks later than usual -- or what used to be usual before global warming really started wreaking havoc from there right up to the French Alps.
When I finally ventured to open the curtains and face the grey drabness outside, it was a surprise to find that January 1 has brought the first Parisian snow of this winter. And the harder it snows, the less frequent are the thuds of drops on the ceiling in the corner.
I'll keep my promise to take Marianne out into those currently totally deserted, shut-down streets to see 'The Return of the King' this afternoon, being every bit as keen to see the last part of 'The Lord of the Rings' as she is. And 'Master and Commander' finally came to town for the weekend.
But I've warned her that there's no question for me of queuing for an hour in the cold outside the Max Linder, and we'll have to settle for one of the city's second-best screens and sound systems at the much nearer Gaumont Parnasse. I'm not in the mood for snowball fights and if she so much as dares to unload almost a bucketful of the stuff down inside my warmest coat, like she did last time we were in Picadilly Circus (Montparnasse) in the snow, there will be no film.
Around midnight, she was asking me to give her ice cubes to rub over any exposed bits of her fevered flesh and drop a couple down the back of her nightdress.
The photos here come from my growing collection of pix of "Marianne and the Swimming Pools and Storms of the World". From the moment she had her first bath in a kitchen sink, it was pretty clear that she was a dolphin in her last incarnation. But I've changed my mind. An Antarctic penguin is more like it.
By the way, I haven't completely forgotten.
If 2003 was a horrible one, then I sincerely wish you the reverse in 2004, in inverse proportion to the awfulness of the "Year when the Cold 'War on Terror' got Hot". And if you've had a wonderful time over the past 12 months, then I wish you even better in the dozen to come.
Whether this is your summer or winter, thanks for passing by!
All the best to each and every one of my visitors!
1:02:18 PM link 
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