Wet, leaky day in Lyon yesterday. And I was still wet when I emerged from the bathroom in the morning and noticed a strange odour. Obviously it wasn't me because I'd just had a shower, but it reminded me of the stink bugs from an African childhood that produced an awful smell when they got squashed. The insects that is, rather than the childhood. Never stepped on one in France though, so it wasn't that either.
Uhoh, gas!
In a naked panic I immediately ran into the kitchen and turned off the gas supply to the cooker and boiler. The smell had pervaded the apartment but eventually dissipated. Unlike 1000 other people in Lyon and the surrounding area, I wasn't panicked enough to call the pompiers. Turned out it was sulphur dioxide leaking from one of the refineries in Fezyin, about 10km further south. No danger to the population, we were told...
Leak number two occurred the previous evening, when some bright spark published one of the questions in the following day's maths Bac exam on the internet, sowing instant panic in the education ministry. The exam papers for the Bac are normally as closely guarded as secrets of state. The education minister eventually decided to strike that particular question from the exam but maintain the rest of the paper sat by thousands of students yesterday morning. The students were none too happy about it, as the question in, err question, was apparently the easiest in the exam…
A more mundane domestic leak occurred later in the afternoon, when a thunderstorm caused a minor flood in the bedroom because I'd left the window open in my perennial summer quest to keep the apartment cool. And another which involved a particularly messy nappy episode, but perhaps I'd better not elaborate on that one.
A day earlier, the annual fête de la musique on midsummer's day was rather dampened in Lyon by leakage from the skies. Music events in the city were played out to a backing track of percussion from the heavens. The summer storm season has started with a bang...
