Why it’s hard to be on a man-fast in Paris

After three disastrous relationships, Libby is on a man-fast when she heads to Paris, but in no-time at all, the smorgasbord of lotharios tempt her like never before. Some of the characters she meets that momentarily distracts her from her work include:

1. Michel - the pastry chef tours her around the Père Lachaise Cemetery, walking through what seems like endless paths with the occasional canopy of trees overhead. Libby takes in the gravesites of Edith Piaf, Jim Morrison, Oscar Wilde and local French heroes, before Michel’s own ‘baguette’ gets in the way!

2. Ames - the nude poet, who writes a lot of his own poetry: love poems, environmental poems, poems about social responsibility and disadvantage. And when he can’t find his own words adequate enough, Ames recites – stark naked – the words of revolutionary Maximilien de Robespierre. Ames is sexy and into social justice… how could any woman resist this man?

3. The Red Beret  a provincial artist who sidles up to Libby at the Musée d’Orsay and wants to whisk her away to Hôtel du Quai Voltaire and paint her nude. The hotel is the only one in Paris with a view of the Seine and the Louvre which is always going to be better than a view of Lake Burley Griffin. And Pissaro used to stay there…. Too tempting, even for Libby?

4. Jake Ross – the blackfella from Deniliquin who’s eyes are two close together, lips too thin, but apparently has a nice derrière. But we all know that Libby didn’t travel half way around the world to meet a fella she could meet back home. But even Jake, the First Secretary at the Australian Embassy in Paris, has picked up some flirtatious French charms that Libby can’t seem to resist, or can she?

Where would be a better city to send Libby if she truly wanted to stay away from good-looking, flirtatious, single, straight men? And don’t say Sydney, I live there and I already know that!