COVER N. 601 -  FRANCE

Postmark: Bureau Philatélique 69 Lyon Bellecour 23.06.2025

Posted on the 23rd June; Received on the 27th June 2025

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The camera travels from the door  into the end of the room, turning to give and overall view of the room largely occupied with a couple of desks. 

Slowly it zooms, in plongée mode, on to one of the desks, closing in on the man frantically eye-browsing through the printout of the exams and continuing to narrow the field of view until the lines that say Triglycerids and Glycemia  fill the screen…

"UFFFFF... no problem there, all within normal range... " 

The man smiles, exhales deeply and  grabs the large kraft paper envelope which he takes to the nose, inhaling the sweet fragrance reminiscent  of rose and raspberry that oozes out of the mostly red and white piece of paper glued onto the brownish envelope.

Pierre Hermé, it says on top of it...

a bed of rose petals and on it no less that 5 heart-shaped stamps ....

The man types "Pierre Hermé" on the Google window on his screen, then hits the "Pâttiseries Signatures" option.

There it is.... the pastry that fills  all the stamps on the lovely miniature sheet....

Ladies and Gentlemen , I give you 

The Ispahan:

Two disks of rose macaroon cookie, stuffed with rose petal cream, raspberries and letchis, topped with a few rose petals and raspberries for decoration...

The man salivates as he careful examines again the souvenir sheet....

He goes downstairs to the kitchen ...; the camera follows him.

From  the cupboard he takes a large glass jar, half full of small white meringue  sweets.  

As if  driven by the discomfort of an hidden but just resuscitated abstinence syndrome, he hurriedly unscrews the lid of the jar and sticks his hand as deep as possible into the mass of  small sugar and egg-white  sweets, grabbing one or two and taking it out again, reminiscent of those coin operated mechanical arms that lure kids at fair grounds and shopping malls into spending their weekly allowances in the vain hope of managing to grab another stuffed toy for the collection...

He puts the sweet into his mouth... he rolls his eyes as  the sugar dissolves slowly against his tongue and oral cavity....

" it's not rose, nor is it raspberry, much less letchi... but it'll have to do....."

On 27JAN2025, La Poste issued its customary annual heart shaped issue in atecipation of Saint Valentine's day,  with which the French Postal Operator promotes French higher end iconic  brands.

This year's the showcased brand is Pierre Hermé, a pastry brand that takes the name of its creator, an influential pastry chef  that has spread his sweet pastries all over Paris and quite a few places around the world, through his large network of shops.

As usual, the issue comprises two stamps: 1,39 €, lettre verte 20 g (the one in the souvenir sheet) illustrated with the Ispahan and  2,78 €, Lettre verte 100g, illustrated with another of Hermé's well known products: a macaroon.

The stamps are cancelled with the postmark of  Lyon's Bureau Philatélique and as usual a totally unnecessary mechanical obliteration is also present on the cover, although the operators were at least careful enough to feed the cover upside down into the machine, so that the postmark would not mar the top of the  cover where the stamps would presumably be.... something that did not work that well in this particular case....

Anyway

Un grand Merci, Eric, for all your care and attention, about which I'll talk a propos my next post...