Sun is shining in Versailles - just don't get too used to it!

I think that the one-week Versailles summer is over, says Versailles weather channel: there will be a little burst of sun this weekend and then au revoir! hasta la vista!! adios!!! bye bye!!!! The eternal clouds will threaten again the decent minds of decent people, you know, like the ones used (and raised) with 4 distinct seasons per year.

When I first arrived in here, 5 years ago, I had my head full of previously formed (strong headed, if you will) ideas, judiciously taken from an entire teenage period full of reading the novels of Alexandre Dumas, Michel Zévaco & alike. Oh, happy years!!! So, for me, life in Versailles was filled with glitter, intrigues, excessively elegant countesses, duchesses, kings and queens (an universe to which I secretly aspired to belong, as a long lost royal child, found and raised by a working class family. To my profound disappointment, only the part with "raised by the working class family" was true, as my cold hearted, based-on-strong-facts birth certificate attested. ...but I digress...)! So, in that enigmatic universe the sun was supposed to be always shining, happily hanging on a steel blue sky, so that the lavish dresses of the demoiselles would show all their fast, opulence and beauty... The intrigues and the romances were supposed to take place during those starry blue, mysterious nights, and the moon would show or hide itself conveniently, when needed. In short, the most realistic weather for such a place, or (crying bitterly) at least, a 4 season year...

I am excessively sorry to announce you that it isn't so. Little did I know that I was supposed to see the real sun just a few times a month only and only if I were lucky (some months I was, some others I wasn't) and I rather had to content myself with the omnipresent magnificence of the roi soleil (= the sun king - not too inspired, this Louis XIV, considering the long list of sun kings before him). It is unfortunate for those Versaillais who are going on vacation this month (the most of the population, that is), because August is, IMHO and based on learned the hard way experience, the sunniest month. It's true that rain comes and goes unexpected and, most importantly, uninvited, but at least we have the privilege to see parts of a (let's say) blue sky, now and then. I can tell you I enjoy it with a maximum of delight, because the norm in here is a cloudy, heavy, boring sky, think of a perpetual autumn (no offence for those enjoying autumn!). The only thing to differentiate the seasons is more or less the rain, as the temperatures are not that variable (between 0° and around 20° most of the time).

All in all ,they might be right, the Versaillais, to go on vacation so often: it’s the weather that dictates their transhumance.