Staring down the very real possibility of leaving France sooner rather than later, I’m taking the time to review my Bucket List.
Louis XIV has already taken care of No 1; the King is whisking me away this spring to see, and smell, the Lavender Fields of Provence. I can’t remember if it was My Mother’s Castle or My Father’s Glory or Jean de Florette or Manon des Sources, but it was in one of those romantic, sun-drenched films I was forced to watch in French class. When I was a teenager, I first saw a screen filled with lavender flowers as far as the eye can see, feathery mauve blankets draped across the sun bleached yellow clay of France’s hottest corner. Ever since, I have wanted to throw myself onto that purple pillow and slip into a luscious lavender coma for at least as long as it takes for someone to proffer another glass of ice cold Rosé.
So the first item will be ticked in May. For January, I settled on Bucket List No 2; the Fish Market at Marseille.
A long time ago, while disinterestedly flicking through food channels on a rainy Saturday afternoon, I happened upon the High Priest of Pisciculture, Rick Stein, banging on about the Fish Wives flogging their husbands’ treasures on the shoreline of the Old Port at Marseille.
You may not know this, but the phrase, to swear like a Fish Wife was actually born in the salty port of France’s second largest city. Should you ever visit, your sense of propriety will remain perfectly in tact; you won’t be able to understand a single word they say. The accent of Marseille being so stained with the broguish tongue curls and nasals of nearby Italy and Africa, you can barely make out their bonjour, let alone their merde or anything remotely crude. In addition to the accent is their incomprehensible slang, a hybrid of French peppered with words they stole from the Maghreb as the human stream of immigration sailed, and continues to sail, into the limestone harbour of France’s largest passenger terminal.
Beyond the romance of salt, of sea and of ships, Marseille is, on the whole, unimpressive. Perched between the fashionable French Riviera to the right and the family friendly holiday resorts of Languedoc to the left, Marseille is a working city studded with chimneys that spew grey smoke into the grey sky and stain the facades of the chalky houses a dirty, smoggy grey. Much like the working harbours in Northern England or Newcastle north of Sydney, the city is undergoing a bit of renovation around the docklands. Disused crumbling brick grain stores are being transformed into very fancy apartments that will be filled with ridiculous lengths of Italianate marble kitchen bench-tops as the Nouveau Riche take over walls their ancestors would have scoffed at.
There is however, a pretty damn impressive brand spanking new Museum.
MuCEM is the museum of Mediterranean Culture inaugurated last year as part of the celebrations to commemorate Marseille being the European Capital of Culture for 2013. Before you get all hot and sweaty with excitement, I will add that this year, Hull, of Northern England, is the European Capital of Culture. The overpaid Bureaucrat that is being paid his weight in gold to decide where the European Capital of Culture is must have a penchant for dusty, dirty, industrialised cesspits in need of a facelift. But anyway, back to this fancy new museum.
If you’ve ever wanted to see just what a clever man can do with concrete and a touch of creativity, the building is really, very impressive. Unlike Gehry’s Aluminium Vomit in Bilbao, MuCEM is a gigantic black concrete lace coated box, designed by a French-Algerian with an Italian name and a wee bit more respect for the existing landscape than the bloke who destroyed Bilbao. From atop the Chantilly Cube stretches a fine black footbridge onto the ancient Fort of St Jean, one of the two that guard the entrance into Marseille’s Old Port. Wandering along the medieval terraces of ochre granite and staring back into the computer generated black concrete masterpiece is a visually extraordinary feat of architectural harmony. Gehry may want to visit.
There are sunlounges dotted everywhere, long benches and designer gardens perched on top of rooms filled with ancient artefacts and a very good restaurant. The views up to the hilltop basilica of Notre Dame de la Garde, Mary standing up high on a hill to protect the mariners, not not the poor fish) are worth the visit. On our chosen day, the only thing we could see was the violence of the gathering storm that dumped enough water to flood most of southern France.
I was far less impressed with the exhibition inside; a visual history of the Mediterranean peoples and how their mastery of agriculture, invention of citizenship, desire to discover new worlds and creation of the three religions of the book means that they are the most advanced people on earth.
Yeah well, they also discovered how to harass, torture and kill each other in the name of afore-mentioned cow, colony, passport or theological fairytale. Not so advanced the way I see it. Although there was a very interesting section about the Death Sentence. I’ve now seen, with my very own eyes, an actual Guillotine that actually killed someone. France, the ever so advanced nation of the Rights of Man practised the death penalty until Mitterand abolished it in 1981. In France, they executed the poor souls with a Guillotine, until the very last one was beheaded, in Marseille, in 1977. My French family assure me that the guillotine is far more effective method of execution as death is instantaneous, unlike the barbaric anglo method of hanging. I suppose I’m just a bit squeamish about the idea of removing a person’s head when not in the context of Tudor marriages or Game of Thrones.
During my short stay in Marseille, I didn’t see a man beheaded, but I was witness to a live Sea Bass being hung, drawn and quartered, upon a small plastic table, in the open space just above a busy Metro Station.
Unburdened by the mundane criteria of anything like a health code or hygiene standards, in Marseille, after the Fish Wife has harassed you into purchasing the frolicking fish in front of her, her knife wielding husband will happily prepare your piscatorial delicacy for cooking. The Sea Bass, as alive as you or I, was rather annoyed at being removed from his tray of seawater and refused to lie still on the scales as he was weighed. He jumped onto the ground at least three times before Madame was able to price him. Sea Bass seasoned with the smoke and shizzle of a pedestrian zone must be delicious.
More spectacular than the aqua acrobatics was the knife entering the belly of the writhing fish and the scarlet sensation of his insides spilling over the table followed by a crimson tide of blood gushing onto the pavement below. A quick wipe over with an oil-stained cloth and the gutted guppy was thrown into a plastic bag in anticipation of a generous bath of garlic and parsley.
For two hours we stood and watched as tables were set up and filled with gasping fish of all shapes and sizes. Crayfish pricked at the eyes of the wiggling fish and squid stared up as they were poked and prodded by customers assessing their freshness. Being winter, there was a fishy frenzy for the Monkfish; the ugliest things you ever did see, so ugly that they are usually sold without their giant toothy heads. Echoing their compatriots of 1789, we observed the beheading of a hundred or so of the tasty little buggers, albeit with a giant knife that slammed down onto the plastic bench, hammering out the rhythm of repetitive death, rather than the slick squeal of Lady Guillotine herself.
After observing the mass murder of a whole lot of fish in a whole lot of increasingly brutal ways, it was time for lunch.
The second reason I wanted to visit Marseille was to eat Bouillabaisse. The dish, a stew of the various fish native to the rocky, salty shores of the Mediterranean is flavoured with saffron and garlic and served with garlic bread and rouille, a sort of mayonnaise thickened with potato. Garlic, bread, potato, fish, mayonnaise…fancy French fish and chips? Possibly… but most definitely one of the most delicious plates of food I have ever eaten.
Wet through after three days of torrential rain and freezing temperatures, it was time to head back to the southern French House on the Prairie, the place I’ve been hiding out these past few weeks. The recent crush has ended with a colossal slap to earth. If only I was as adept at selecting the qualities of the opposite sex as I am at combining words to describe food?
Today, I’m off again. The red Swiss Army suitcase will roll into another city, for another adventure. I’m not sure what this one will bring, but I know that I’ll never, ever stop moving, searching and seeing…or falling stupidly in love with inappropriate men and ridiculously handsome British movie stars.
After three months of anxious panic and crippling stress, it is definitely time I got Loki.
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