My Sort of City

I will be sorry to leave Marseille. I have resonated with the place. Raw, contradictory, syncretic. Restaurants full of books, a Black Madonna, good café coffee, the stepped streets of Les Panier. My sort of city.

Surprisingly given that I am the most moon-white Englishman man you can find, even the weather agreed with me. Marseille in July is hot and dry, tempered to my taste by sea breeze and fag-end Mistral. I feel my body recovering in this climate. The asthmatic miasma in my chest evaporates. My hay fever stops. Old wounds of flesh and spirit begin drying out after years behind dampened bandages. Even the deep rooted arthritis in my left foot responds. The 154 metre climb to the Notre Dame de la Garde makes it throb like buggery, but two minutes sitting on the steps of the gaudy basilica and it is back to a dull ache that lets me walk on for hours.

There is a tradition of praying to the Black Madonna of the abbey of Saint-Victor for the recovery of lost memories. In this healing climate, I can even believe that the black spots in my grey matter and the damaged nerve paths could repair. Whether I would want to recall everything misplaced in the wreckage left behind by the TIAs is another matter.

Beyond its curative properties, Marseille is a place I know I could write it. We all have our blue sky dreams, but if some publisher would advance me the funds, I could easily transplant for six months to a small room in Vieux Port or Le Panier, returning home with my überwork. Being divorced from hearing English often makes it easier to put in black and white, especially if every evening promises an apéritif break to be taken on Rue Sainte.