Lyon

I am struck by how thoroughly anglophone Europe is these days.  There are two workmen fixing the facade of our building.  Our uber cool little studio has access to the garden courtyard where  one man is abseiling half way up the building.

  I am sitting at the little iron table. with an umbrella over it.  The second guy comes up to me aimiably "Be careful my colleague up.  I would not like any alteration to your head"  I go in nervously. "Sit outside" he invites and moves the table away from the swinging ropes for me. Hardly anyone doesn't speak English. 

We went into Lyon today slightly downcast because we hadn't been able to get in touch with my niece and her family and we'd bought lots of chicken yesterday to cook for them tonight.  Finally we got a phone call and it turned out there'd been a crisis at her husband's Stephan's work.  Something about somebody being shot so I'm not surprised they lost track of us.  Anyway they are coming tonight and the chicken is nicely simmering in wine with Greek herbs.

Actually something might be going on in Lyon.  A metro station we went to had at least twenty soldiers with machine guns patrolling it. Nobody seemed unduly peturbed however and a woman was on the special pedalling machine which recharges your phone.  But surely there aren't enough soldiers for every station to have so many.  All a bit uneasy making.  And a black unmarked van was being towed away from an official building with a string of ambulances and fire engines standing by.  Could France be a bordelle after all or is it my hyperviligance, the anxst that comes with every simple thing being fraught with possible mistakes - crossing the road, parking the car (and we get towed way if we get that wrong) - queueing in the random way the French do. No nice relaxing lines but they still know whose turn it is.  Even apologising can go wrong.  I don't like "Pardon" because it is a bit rude in English, but I'm not sure about "Excusez moi" either. The world bustles by in Lyon and the traveller becomes something of a lost soul.  Irrelevant and clumsy.  The natives all around are from everywhere and there is a cheerful Muslim presence - a big Halal meat counter in the supermarket with a "Bon Ramadan" sign above it.  That seems oddly contradictory to me.  I thought Ramadan was supposed to be a time of deprivation, not a blow out like Christmas is for us.  But perhaps the "Bon" is meant in a deeper spiritual sense.  Who knows.

One incident on the metro impressed me. A thoroughly mutilated woman came into our carriage sort of hopping along on her bottom with her legs out behind her.  She was begging in that practised pleading way that accustomed beggars have.  Everybody shook their heads or averted their gaze round us and she passed on only to return in a bit, not performing any more. A black guy by the door sheepishly slipped something into her bag thus breaking the pattern of the carriage.  I wondered if this was perhaps a Muslim thing - to give to beggars and I wished I'd done it too.  It must be nice to have simple feelings about giving to strangers.

We went to the rather formidable and expensive Museum of Tissues and Cultural Design.  I'd hoped for lovely fabrics and I suppose in their way the exhibits were indeed that.  It's just I didn't like them very much.  They were mostly 18th century wall hangings, florid and opulent and silky with far too many fat cherubs on them. The mighty tapestries had gods and goddesses with silly expressions on their faces. How is it that painting can bring alive ancient characters but tapestry makes them deader than ever.   And so much work it must have taken to produce these huge dark wall hangings.  It seems a pity.  I realise that what I like is rather rough stuff, serviceable and dashing but not exquisite.  Not the product of years of slavery and lost eyesight anyway.  I want to be delighted rather than impressed which seems to be what the stuff in this museum is all about.

The cultural design museum also saddened me a bit.  Room after room of splendid 18th century furniture just as it must have been when it was in action.  But to me it oozed a lifestyle of wealth but not enough to do.  I could imagine ladies sitting around with their little workboxes, bored out of their minds and saying thoughtless things like "Let them eat cake"

One item however charmed me and one gave me the shivers.  The charming one was a "beard dish" - a soup bowl with a wide rim which had a mouth sized chunk cut out, presumable so the gentleman could lift up the bowl to drain its dregs with his beard tucked nicely underneath.  What about the moustache, I thought. Really our modern straws have solved a lot of problems.  I wonder who invented them.

The horrible thing was a room full of modern military fabric woven in such a way as to make it defensive and fireproof, fit for any kind of combat. It was displayed on a mannequin soldier with straps here and there, all very battle ready.  It didn't seem at all appropriate to a museum which is after all "a place where you put things you don't use any more"  One can only hope that one day all that nasty stuff will be as bizarre and unused as the sedan chair on the floor below.