Winter is officially here, Tuesday, 1 December

No question about it. Today was the first day of winter and both Virginia and I looked like Charlie Brown in Peanuts when we headed out - albeit at different times. The days are getting shorter with it being dark until about 8.30 in the morning and in the evening night begins to fall around 4.00. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, as we keep reminding ourselves, we are on vacation and if we don't want to get up until it is light, we do not need to. At the same time, however, it means getting a later start but since many things don't open until 10.00 that is really no problem. In the late afternoon and early evening, the darkness is quite pleasant. The streets are still full of people and the newly installed Christmas decorations are aglow. As the holiday approaches, of course, there will be much more.

We find this interesting because Virginia remembers when she visited France as a child, that the celebrations were more low-key, especially compared with England. That certainly no longer seems the case and we are looking forward to seeing just how they blend the commercial and religious elements in what is a largely Catholic country with a very significant Islamic population.

As we have mentioned in the past, Paris is a city in which the great majority of the population lives in flats in six and seven storey buildings. That, of course, is why parking is such a problem; but a problem which is perhaps a bit less evident is that of the constant need for repairs and maintenace as well a the installation of phones and other such modern conveniences. There is a whole industry engaged in this and we frequently see little white maintenance vans which are allowed to park in front of buildings. In our building alone, we estimate that there are 72 flats where the plumbing and electricity run throughout the building. A leak on one floor often has catastrophic effects on another as we learned a few years ago when an overflowing bath in the flat above ours meant massive repairs to this flat as well as to the one in which the problem arose. Communal living causes special problems. For example, on the ground floor of our building there is a room full of "wheelie bins" for which the strata title management people employ a young man who comes to the building every evening and puts all the bins out on the pavement ready for the daily rubbish collection. The following morning he comes back and replaces them in the room from which they service the 72 flats and all the people who reside in them. The whole organization of maintenance and cleanliness of a block of flats is quite a business as we are sure is the case in any great city.

Back to today. I decided to stay in and work and Virginia took the opportunity to do her own thing. Before leaving Australia she had researched the location of quilt shops in central Paris and today she took the opportunity to visit one. It is called Le Rouvray and is situated just behind the bookstore, Shakespeare and Co. in a cute little square. It seemed strange to see all the quilting accoutrements with French labels but basically it was very much the same as in any of the many countries in which quilting takes place. It seems to be a truly universal hobby.