Last night was Alison's birthday, so we all went out for excessive drinking and eating (ending up at Dôme du Marais - apologies to everyone there!). The picture to the right was from Chez Richard, were Alison's receiving a cuban happy birthday song.

Just before I called round to pick her up, I was stopped by the police on rue des Francs Bourgeois because the cornicing of a building had just collapsed onto the road (just round the corner from Cafe Hugo). Amazingly no one had been hurt (this was told to us by a policeman who seemed immensely pleased with himself - I suspect he had been the centre of attention for quite a while). This is incredibly lucky, since Francs Bourgeois is a really really busy street, mostly tourists.

I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, but glad it doesn't. Often you see people working on the roofs of Paris with a strange scaffolding structure sticking out from the wall (in other words, not the usual metal structure starting from the ground). Often these are made of wood, with planks criss-crossing at random. I'll try and find a picture sometime, but they always seemed a bit shaky to me!