 She was moon-faced and managing to look both hopeless and cheerful, hunched over a tube map with almost the smallest print imaginable. I took pity on her.
"Perdue?"
She looked blank.
"Lost?"
"Is this a nice place to go?" she asked, smothering three Métro stations at once with a chubby finger.
"Montmartre?" I asked. "In this weather?"
"No, here."
"I can't read it."
"Abbesses. It's my last day. At the hotel they said it's a nice place to go."
"Well, I suppose it's about as nice as anywhere else today, if you plan on staying out of doors," I answered, remembering a Russian restaurant with warm staff and filling food suited to the season, without bothering to add that from there she was likely to find herself on the nearby funicular up to the top of the Sacré Coeur hill anyway, staring down over the city as long as she could stand the biting wind.
"What madness brings you to Paris at this filthy time of year?" I asked.
"The cold," she said bluntly, looking as if she meant it.
Thus my day began on the M platform a few moments after taking the picture of the post box and my pizzeria Canteen, with the camera in my phone.
Some fool at the Factory apparently told the world, fortunately not on our English wires, that "heavy snow" fell on Paris overnight. The International Herald Tribune even published a front-page Eiffel tower picture which somebody must have thought romantic.
 Heavy? It's a light dusting of treacherous slippery yuk. So I told the Chinese-Malay tourist from California in the M where to change lines, added that this kind of weather usually lasts until the end of April, blamed global warming and decided to add an extra month for a newly arrived American colleague at work who said she'd had enough of the winter.
Haven't we all?
The pictures are for the Squip, my response to her request beneath a previous blog post.
Maybe she'll remember previous snaps of the view south and north from my perch overlooking Losserand Street in brighter months when I'm more inclined to outdoor activity, with or without clothes, than right now.
She's welcome to come and have a look for herself if she sends me a fitting answer to a question it's safer to leave off this public log and ask women I've not met either by e-mail or on the phone. Hint: don't wear black...
Should the answer be as suitable as I suspect it might, I'd be only too happy to let her put an arm in mine out on that street on a day like this to keep me upright and make sure this site and all other ongoing business doesn't come to a permanent halt.
I've already survived three falls in 2005 as dramatic as a lone oak tree brought down with the final swipe of a chainsaw.
The second was sudden and noisy enough to rouse any Spanish speakers enjoying a siesta at the far end of the news room in the Factory ... which is no longer the Madhouse I dubbed it while Bush was this side of the Atlantic and doctors, cardinals and "death-watch" journalists were wondering which Saint Peter the pontiff would be seeing next: an earthbound square or the one who allegedly guards the gates upstairs.
That particular fall happened the wrong side -- if she has one -- of the final victim of my happily abandoned habit of "falling in love with Love" instead of women. I'd imagined once that should I ever find myself flat at her feet, it would be in front of her rather than directly behind her chair when dozens of people were around.
When I called our new desk chief the next day to say I was sick and gave "fatigue" as an excuse, his answer was of the kind I deserved for assuming he already knew about my accident and for being incoherent since by dawn the pain was acute and Ellie had said she heard ghastly "cracking noises".
 All that seems to have happened ages ago and the knee the doctor told me was still more or less intact no longer hurts, nor -- much -- do other bits of me bashed in the third and I hope last such crash of the year. But it feels like even this morning is weeks past already, something I only remark on because another woman at work, Emma, said time seems to have gone wonky, then a friend in a local shop said the same thing tonight.
Maybe for me it has something to do with no longer measuring time, at a scarcely conscious level, by intervals between seeing Eleanor, which I haven't for a few weeks.
Sometimes I catch myself missing her deeply, the way I guess maybe most of us do others who've played a huge part in our lives and then suddenly aren't there any more. I can't find the words to say what I mean. When I can, it'll probably bring my screenplay out of hibernation.
She's only a phone call or a quick e-mail away, but for some reason beyond any explanation, I've felt a sense of rightness in doing neither, as with another friend with whom I've avoided contact for a little while. Some relationships need to gestate. If you don't understand a word of this, fine. Neither do I...
Maybe it's the weather.
12:08:13 AM link 
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