The Lyon's peck

The last time I was in Lyon...

Did that go down smooth, creamed with nonchalance?

... I was very hungry.

I was at this workshop, and the food was mostly meat creamed with cheese. The French tend to think that vegetrianism is some unknown sub-tropical disease. They keep a safe distance. The waiters being french, spoke french, and nodded sagely when confirming that the duck is purely vegetarian. You can well imagine that I was fast losing weight. And food.

It is then that she rode up in shining armour and high heels. Speaking french with a belgian lilt she quickly got the garcon to deliver veggies (that were without feathers and exo-skeleton), got me non-alcoholic grape juice so that I could look the wine-drinkers in the eye (approximately, the wine, you know, gets the drinker cross-eyed pretty fast), and, wait for it, she even laughed at mine jokes.

Quite something, huh? I was on to a good thing, huh?

So, when on departure day, when one goes around gladhanding and promising to follow up research, I finally took leave from her, her saying that we must kiss, seemed to be the logical conclusion to a torrid affair. Right?

As torrid as a storm in a test-tube.

Of course, she meant that she wanted to indulge in that silly false-hope-raising French exercise of lightly brushing each other's cheeks. So near, and yet so far.

All for the best though, that cheek had hair to put my three-day beard to shame.

Classic formula: White skin + blonde hair = can't see the damn things until close contact.

I leave you with some of my favourite shots of Lyon, a question about King Louis (Walt Disney wasn't so far off, it seems), a vacant but tantalising lookin' viola gal, a crazy rockgal, a hot but tepid painter, an over-the-hill rocker. 'NJoy.