Monday evening in Paris

It must be 85°F out, and it's only mid-May. The lawn at the Jardin de Reuilly park (at least I think that's what it's called. The one at the end of the elevated Promenade Planté in the 12 arrondissment of Paris) is covered with people sunning. A green beach.
The blinding flesh!
We're not prepared for this.
They can't believe their good luck here in Paris. It's like being in the south, without having to battle all day on the freeway to get there. In Clermont as well, the city-dwellers are rejoicing, lingering with a coke or a mint-perrier at the sidewalk cafés.
Those with gardens, however, are noticing in a different way. The warm, dry weather means watering. Watering all the time. A mile further from town, and the farmers are clearly worried. Fine days, too many fine days when we should be only just coming out of the wet season. The grass isn't growing.
...
Aside from the exceptional weather, the subject of every headline and heard from every café table is DSK.
Incredulity.
It must all be a setup
How could he be so stupid
Shock at the American police
(but haven't you all seen it on tv a thousand times? did you think it was all made up?)
Whatever will we do now to beat Sarko?
More incredulity
How could he have so little class?
and back to the beginning.
...
I'm embarrassed to go out to dinner.
I'd be more at ease with friends, but around the table, colleagues who, like me, came to Paris for the colon cancer meeting, and are staying for the breast cancer meeting tomorrow.
It's my left hand, mostly. I pitted kilos and kilos of cherries over the weekend, for jam and for freezing, and halved kilos more for drying. My fingertips are deeply stained with cherry juice. Wherever the cuticles are gnawed, every scratch, deep under the nails, is dark, dirty. I can't get it all off.

But whatever. At least in Paris there isn't ice in my kir.