Jean-Louis 14#

Jean-Louis was the nicest Frenchman I’d met up to then. We had got talking en route at a pit stop in a Routier shortly after the French frontier. He bought us some beers, always a good sign, and challenged us to a game of French billiards, bizarrely a table with only three balls and no pockets. The essence of the game was lost in translation struggling with both the technique and the scoring but Jean-Louis was a sport, and let us win displaying none of the arrogance we expected of the French stereotype. He was an instant ami.